Through a student creative entrepreneurship club called Artup, I worked with a team of diverse VCU students to create a crowd funding campaign for a local artisan, Brian Lopez, and his startup Glide Skateboards. Glide Skateboards are handcrafted surfing-inspired skateboards made from reclaimed wood such as old floor boards. We met weekly at a local design firm, INM United, to learn what goes in to starting a business and creating a brand identity.
We developed the Glide Skateboards kickstarter with a promotional video, photographs of his products, logo redesign, copy, website development, and other promotional materials for the launch party (see below). The kickstarter however was unsuccessful due to lack of market research. We conducted consumer surveys initially, but not in depth or unbiased enough to find that Richmond may not have been the ideal location to start his company. The lessons we learned from all sides of this experience have stuck with me throughout college more than some of the work in my classes.
This is one example of many projects I’ve done with Artup where we’ve worked on brand identity with local businesses generating creative content for them such as videos, photography, logos, websites, etc.
My involvement with this club and this project made me realize my desire to work with startups and communicate with passionate people to help them turn their ideas into a memorable brand.
