Written by: Yolanda Jiang, FCSN Voices Youth Reporter
Graphics by: Audrey Wong, FCSN Voices Graphic Artist

FCSN Voices’ article banners and the heading of the FCSN Voices’ website are all made by the FCSN Voices Graphic Artist Team, run completely by volunteers and led by team leaders like Amanda Loh. With the benefit of her experience and leadership skills, Amanda, along with all the other leaders, plays a huge role in the success of the FCSN Graphic Artist Team. To make banners for the articles, the graphic artists in the FCSN Graphic Artist Team get to choose from a selection of assignments. If applicable, they would be officially assigned it. Then, the Senior Graphic Artists review them and give feedback. Afterwards, the team lead, who is currently Christy Ma, reviews and sends it for publication on the FCSN Voices website. 

Amanda started her journey with FCSN in the summer of 2021 before her freshman year of high school at the recommendation of a family friend. The same year, she joined a few volunteering opportunities like summer programs, SNTutoring, and FCSN Voices, though Voices was her main focus. She began as a graphic artist in her first year. In her second year with FCSN, she was promoted to Senior Graphic Artist. Afterwards, she was eventually promoted to Graphic Artist Team Lead. Her role in the team was to review and give feedback to artists’ banners and to oversee projects such as the collab and doodle ones. Her mentor was Shelley Li, who is currently the Youth Team Mentor. Amanda explains how Shelley “was instrumental in how I shaped my leadership style within the team…She goes above and beyond with everything she does and that is what I aimed to do in my role”.  Now, Amanda has climbed ranks again and works by mentoring other Team Leads. She is also responsible for leading transition meetings, checking in, and being available when needed.

The article banners are made for each article written by a FCSN Voices reporter and displayed with article titles. Collab projects are where special needs students meet with their assigned graphic artist weekly for a month to work on a digital art project. Inspired by Google doodles, the doodle projects are created each month and are Amanda’s personal favorites due to the plentiful creativity and freedom blossoming in each piece. They entail creating something related to the month or a significant event in the special needs community that occurs that month. An example is the Christmas-themed heading made for December. The finished banner is displayed at the top of the FCSN Voices website for the readers to admire. 

In Amanda’s four years of working with FCSN Voices, she has personally seen a lot of improvement in the people and the program. 

“When I first joined…it wasn’t entirely run by students at first,” Amanda said. “But it was later transferred over to student leadership. So everything was still kind of new and changing.” 

The graphics artist team was still working on pitching project ideas, but those were not always successful. Slowly, but surely, the graphics artist team grew and stabilized consistent projects to do. In fact, she recalls a time when the publication rates for the articles soared. Later on, the team decided to regulate the publication rate a bit more, keeping it stable and consistent. Regarding the team members, Amanda has personally seen their growth in digital art over the years. Amazed and proud of them, Amanda expresses that she is glad that FCSN is a place where the talents of volunteers can be shown.

Undoubtedly, challenges are present on the path to success. Amanda believes that the biggest challenge they are currently facing is communication, especially with how remote the team is. The team rarely meets in person due to the large number of people, each with their own busy schedules. 

“Communication is key, especially with group chats and email updates,” Amanda explains. 

Adding to the problem, Amanda said that she and many other team leader mentors are college students, making time commitment difficult near midterms and finals. Furthermore, the central leadership team is entirely of high school students. With everyone being so busy with exams, college prep, and school in general, it is not always easy to keep the team together. 

When asked for advice from her to new incoming FCSN Youth reporters and artists, her answer is simple: communication. She talked about her experience, “When I was a graphic artist, and I was emailing all these [upper classmen], I was always scared to send emails. So I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I really want to send this email.’ But it’s like making sure to communicate…especially with us being remote”.  Amanda explains that the community is very positive and understanding, so there is no need to be afraid of asking for anything. She also emphasizes how communication is crucial when working together in the team.

“Even if it’s telling someone, ‘Hey, I actually am really busy,’ or ‘I have a ton of work this week, and I really need an extension,’ most of the time…we’re always gonna grant an extension ’cause we know how busy our lives can get…Don’t be afraid to just talk and express [your needs]”. 

Looking towards the future of the FCSN Graphic Artist Team, Amanda wishes that there would be more creative, successful pitches for projects. Amanda hopes that “in the coming years, with more people coming in, [there are more ideas]. So I hope to see them implemented…even if it means [putting aside] one program or one project, you know, so be it…there’s always more innovative ideas that could be better for the community”.

Gallery:

Pictures from Amanda’s Portfolio: