Minnesota Zoo

The Minnesota Zoo opened in 1978, with a mission to connect people, animals, and the natural world to save wildlife. With its conservation programs to help protect endangered species and preserve critical ecosystems, I was ecstatic when I was selected for the student internship program. Helping our environment and animal welfare is a passion of mine, and I am proud to have helped the Minnesota Zoo further its mission. Here are a few of the projects that I worked on.

During my internship at the Minnesota Zoo in the Graphic Design Department, I was given the Give to the Max Day campaign. The Minnesota Zoo participates in Give to the Max Day to help raise funds that go directly to specific areas of need within the Zoo. I worked diligently on this campaign over a couple of weeks. I created social media profile pictures that everyone could download and use, postcards to mail out, email templates to send to all of their subscribers, stickers, buttons, and other advertising material to hand out to guests visiting the Zoo to help encourage donating and raise a significant amount of funds. This was definitely one of my favorite projects to work on at the MN Zoo. 

The Minnesota Zoo offers educational trips called EdVentures that teens and adults can go on. These trips enrich participants' knowledge and provide an opportunity to give back to the environment and help others. I created two different flyers to promote two of the current EdVenture trips, one for teens to Costa Rica and one for adults to Panama. 

Once per week, I updated the Minnesota Zoo's schedule of events. I used the existing design and changed the information and photos to match their weekly calendar. This required great attention to detail to get all of the dates correct. I then sent the schedule of events to the printer to get them printed in time for the guests to have during their visits.

During the holidays, the Minnesota Zoo promotes its membership program by advertising gift cards. I designed flyers and signs to help promote the membership program to guests visiting the Zoo or driving past the Zoo. They also used the same design for website banners and advertisements.

One of my final projects during my internship was designing a new layout for the Minnesota Zoo's Overview of Conservation Programs booklet. I used similar colors to the previous version and found new photos from the Zoo's photo database to use for each section of information. It is a little hard to see when viewing this online, but the background is a light grey and each section of information (including the titles in green) has a white box background to make it stand out.