Georgia Runoffs
November 2020
While I was watching an episode on Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj called “Don’t Ignore the Asian Vote in 2020”, my mind was blown. Despite being the fastest growing voter segment out of all ethnic groups, Asian Americans have also been the least politically engaged in history. Biden winning the election was a huge win alone but having a Democratic Senate majority hinging on the Georgia runoffs was too critical to ignore. I decided to use my podcast’s Instagram (@chattingwithasians) to bring awareness to the Georgia runoffs and engage with the AAPI community.
Type: Instagram carousel post
Tools: Canva
The Process
Collecting the data
When I’m creating IG posts from scratch, sometimes it’s easier and quicker for me to use Canva as my digital workspace throughout the whole process. My data collection process makes me feel like I’m a data journalist 🕵️♀️ I’ll have a bunch of tabs open of different articles. As I’m researching, I’ll copy and paste snippets that I think will be useful onto draft IG posts. Simultaneously, I’m rearranging these posts and moving around content to make sure that the story flows.
Designing in Canva
I wanted the designs to be really eye-catching so that people would be compelled to read the posts. Gradients are so hot right now. They especially seem to be making a comeback with other Millennial and Gen-Z activist IGs like @intersectionalenvironmentalist and @jointhecosmos. I wanted to experiment with gradients while using a blue and orange color scheme (blue to represent the Democratic party, orange to represent the Georgia peach).
My mind organized the story flow of the posts into three main topics: (1) what’s currently at stake, (2) who the Democratic candidates are, (3) and a call to action. With the blue and orange color scheme, I wanted the “what’s at stake” posts to be predominantly blue with orange highlights to draw attention to important stats like “23,000 more eligible young people”. Then the “meet the candidate” post would help transition between the two topics by being a gradient from blue to orange. Finally, the CTA posts to be predominantly orange to give a sense of urgency.
What I Learned
The purpose of this post was to inspire followers to volunteer their time to help the GA runoffs. This is similar to the purpose of my other IG post encouraging AAPI folks to fill out the Census 2020. A lot of the design was driven by a sense of urgency and engaging others to take action, so the result was a lot of bold colors and bold text. I’m really loving the process of establishing the purpose of IG posts and then figuring out how design enhances the posts.
When I took a look at my IG insights after posting this, I learned that:
It had reached 435 accounts (23% who weren’t following me)
It was saved 15 times
And it was shared via DM 60 times!
Overall, I wasn’t striving to be viral with this. Instead, I was aiming to make these posts engaging enough so that people would be inspired to help with the GA runoffs and encourage their circle of friends to do the same.