This week was the start of making the Moving Mountains Project real. This was an exciting time because all the planning and preparation I had done was going to pay off. To me, this was the fun part, designing and creating the posts the way I had envisioned them in my head. One of the reasons this project excites me so much, is because I know it’s for a good cause and can hopefully make a difference, but also because it’s my personal project. I can ultimately make the final decision on what these posts are about and what they look like. This is the week my project will really take off and I will start sharing it with the world.  

 Using my Trello board, I knew exactly where to start. The first thing I had to do was make the project’s Instagram account. While my posting schedule hasn’t started just yet, I had to make a bio for the page and also a stellar profile picture. As you can see in the photo below, I aim to keep the logo simple and recognizable with the project name alongside some mountains. In creating this photo, I decided to create a color theme that would be consistent throughout my page, including the posts. My goal being to look consistent and professional but also to have my grid look cohesive. I ultimately decided on shades of green and gold, and tan. By creating this look, I already have finalized the hardest part of designing it. The colors, fonts and style have been determined, which will help me each week as I start making the posts.

Since my Instagram was now up and running, my next step was to start designing my posts! I first started this process by watching some tutorials on making Infographics, since I wanted to know some best practices and how to make my posts more readable and inviting. The Visme channel on Youtube was a great resource and I ended up watching many of their videos to get inspired. After watching a few videos, I dived into reading some articles on the topic of my posts. I truly thought I would be able to read a bit and create this content quickly since it’s such a small space to design for. But come to find out, it is quite a challenge. Most the articles I was reading like the National Centers for Environmental Information annual report are quite lengthy and being able to pull the necessary information out of them and shortening paragraphs into one sentence bullet points can be a struggle. There was just so much information, and to me, all of it was important to include. I soon realized that I was going to have to do some major trimming and really find the most important facts that I wanted to share. Eventually I got to a great place and was able to sketch out some ideas for the video and the two image posts for this week. While I don’t want to give anything away just yet, I have posted one of my sketches below.

 I am happy to report that the designs came out amazing and I’m excited to post them and show them off to the Instagram world. This first full week of creating this project has been a great success thus far. I hope to keep my momentum up and use this motivation to get a head start on next week’s posts. My new goal is to try and read my articles and watch my videos ahead of time so that I can give myself space to think about how to make a post out of this information. While some tasks this week did not go as planned, I do feel great that I was able to accomplish so much. Getting started on Instagram has made this project feel more real and has inspired me to use this platform to make as much of difference as I can.