For one of my favorite internships, I worked at the W.K. Kellogg Manor House. Located on the campus of the Kellogg Biological Station, this historical site was breathtaking in every sense of the word. For my internship as the Historical Writing Intern, I was tasked with researching the life of W.K. Kellogg and his summer estate, Eagle Heights. This was one of the most in-depth and rigorous research projects I've undertaken, and it was ultimately one of the most rewarding. I dug through historical archives, searched through book after book of W.K. Kellogg's legacy, and even went so far as contacting a windmill database in The Netherlands. In the end, I am so satisfied and happy with the results. But I did much more than just write the history pages; I also found original photographs for all of the original structures, created promotional materials for the Manor House members-only events, and created a timeline for use in docent tours of the Manor. At the end of my internship, I created and presented a poster at a campus-wide symposium that both summed up my internship experience and research.
W.K. Kellogg Manor House History PagesThis was the biggest project I worked on during my internship with the Manor House. The Manor House was about to launch a new history page on their website, but they needed someone to write all of their content; that someone was me. Producing all of the written content for a new webpage is a huge undertaking, especially when all of the research for said project still had yet to be done. The Manor House wanted an expanded history on the seven original structures on the estate, and while they had an abundance of information on some structures, there was next to nothing on others. I spent months uncovering historical materials and researching in order to create content that not only was informative and educational, but fit the theme the Manor House was looking for. Though it took nearly the whole summer to complete in full, I am so pleased with how the history pages turned out.
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Experiential PosterI created this poster to present at the campus-wide symposium at the end of the summer. Unlike the other scientific posters at KBS, my poster was a synthesis of my historical research on the estate and W.K. Kellogg. I designed it, edited the pictures for clarity, and created the poster in InDesign while keeping with design standards for the Manor House. I wanted to make the poster black and white to give it that historical feeling, and I took some decals that the Manor House had used in their docent orientation packet to create some contrast with the black and white background . The posters had to be fairly large, which presented a challenge as I had never previously created and printed a poster of that size. After a few failed attempts, I was able to create a poster to my own satisfaction. My supervisors were also impressed; they asked if they could keep it and display it within the Manor House for special occasions.
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Rookwood EventWhile I was at the Kellogg Manor House, we organized a member-only event with the last living original Rookwood artisan as all of the original tile in the Manor House came from the famous pottery company. For the event, I researched the history of Rookwood to give a brief presentation before Bill Glass, the guest artisan, spoke. Then I created an event flyer with Constant Contact to be sent out to members via email, and a program list and menu card to be placed on the tables. I took pictures of the tile in the house and incorporated them into the documents.
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TimelineAbout halfway through the summer at KBS, my supervisor suddenly asked me to create a timeline of the history of the estate. Since it was basically a synthesis of my summer research, I thought it would be pretty easy, but it was unexpectedly difficult. The dimensions and amount of information weren't really compatible, so it was difficult to get all of the information on the page. I also had to keep in mind that most of the guests in the Manor House were older and had trouble seeing small text, so I had to find a way to make the timeline readable but still aesthetically pleasing. I used text boxes to make the information pop, and used the same red decals I used in my experiential poster to draw the eye to the information. To my knowledge, it is still hanging up in the entryway.
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