James’ digital artefact Mugg Sport consists of interviewing and writing features on Australian athletes across a range of sports including rugby league, football and cricket. In his last year of university, Mugg Sport has allowed James to build a strong journalistic portfolio and develop his writing and design skills.
Originally, James repurposed content from previous semesters and wrote articles on well-known athletes and teams like basketball player Patty Mills and NRL team Melbourne Storm. On his Instagram, he would post an episode of his podcast ‘Tackling Mental Health At Its Roots’ then a preview to the upcoming article of the week followed by the article itself. Showcasing his design skills, the Mugg Sport Instagram and Wix website follow a white format that allows each interviewee’s team colours to direct the aesthetic. While other projects restrict themselves to a particular aesthetic that can lack appeal or draw attention away from the content itself, James has successfully found the middle ground and crafted a cohesive and visually engaging digital artefact.
For the last 3 articles, James adjusted his Instagram layout to a hint of who he’ll be interviewing, the announcement of the article and then the feature image of the article. James was able to make multiple posts despite it being based around one particular piece of content. In order to maintain and enhance the user experience of his audience, James outlined in his beta that he will start using more video content. This was one of my main suggestions along with posting excerpts from the interview to encourage his audience to visit his website and read the full article.
I’ve followed James project closely throughout the semester and was able to help connect him with his latest interviewee, Luke Bain. Based on his analytics, the rugby league related articles garnered the most interactions and while I could suggest to focus on this and hone in on a particular audience, the primary goal of his digital artefact is to build and broaden his journalistic portfolio. By prototyping a range of different sport athletes, James has been able to improve his overall writing skills and sport knowledge as well as creating a feedback loop to specifically determine his audiences interests.
With lockdown restrictions beginning to ease, James is looking to start posting podcasts and potentially video interviews which will add a valuable multimedia aspect to his digital artefact and strengthen his video editing and live production skills. As James is utilising his digital artefact as a portfolio of his work, I can understand why he chose Instagram as his main platform other than the website. However, in the next couple of articles I’d love to see him prototype different hashtags to increase his reach and gain a better understanding of his target audience. Mugg Sport has exceeded its semester goals already so in the final weeks of BCM302 and for the rest of 2021, I encourage James to put his portfolio to practice and begin freelancing his work to various sport publications.
Laura’s digital artefact was originally Sainted Souls, an embroidery business targeting the market of sentimental and personalised gift-giving. After realising her initial project didn’t meet the FIST principles, she changed her digital artefact to a social media management business, Soul Socials.
Soul Socials exists on her Instagram where she’s made 5 posts and her Wix website where you can find her resume/CV. In her beta, Laura shared that the website was time consuming in its prototyping stage which hindered her activity on the Instagram account. Laura’s website is a clear example of her talent in marketing and design with the resume/CV being the primary focus. While I’m not sure how many clients Laura has had so far, it could be a useful addition to the website as a portfolio of some of your latest and best work.
With the website finished for now, the biggest challenge for Laura is now increasing engagement, activity and feedback loops on her Instagram. Currently, she’s made 5 posts with content ranging from quotes, mood boards and marketing/branding tips. Although she has a following of almost 300 people, each post averages one like and no comments. The iterations that Laura has made to her project included the use of ‘call to actions’ and posting unique stories that are important in catching the attention of her audience and encouraging engagement.
In my opinion, her best piece of content has been her ‘How To Choose The Right Colours For Your Brand‘ post that utilised Instagram’s carousel tool to share her three key tips. While content variety is valuable for any digital artefact, I think Laura should continue exploring these tips and tricks type of posts as it aligns with audience’s needs and her project’s sense of community building. Furthermore, she could even develop this into video content for Reels and TikTok which may give her the opportunity to better become the face of her digital artefact and personal brand.
Heading into the final weeks of BCM302, I’d love to see Laura dedicate some time to scheduling her content like she did earlier in the semester. This is something I’m also looking to do as it creates a larger and regular online presence for the digital artefact that inevitably updates basic feedback loops like what content her audience values more, when the recommend posting times are and how her following has grown. Despite the setbacks from changing project direction to time-consuming website designing, Laura has created a professional and appealing resume and is now turning her attention to expanding her following and content on Instagram.
Good luck to James, Laura and the rest of the BCM302 cohort as we complete the final weeks of the semester. Almost there, phew.
Frank Tremain.
Frank Tremain 