👋 Hey there John, Kiersten, & the o＜ team!

Why do I want to be Outerknown’s Social Media Manager? Let me distill it into 3 core values.

1️⃣ I am humble. While I strive to perform at the highest level, I recognize that I am far from all-knowing. I want to collaborate with designers, with photographers, with brand managers, and creatives to tell the story of Outerknown.
2️⃣ I am scrappy. When you have a concept, I’ll brainstorm, execute, and iterate. Having a foundation of Product Design as my educational background, I live by the notion of flare > focus, brainstorm, prototype, iterate, refine, and repeat.
3️⃣ I am flexible. The fashion industry and social media parallel in the fact that they cycle; there are periods of trends, there are moments of needing to be agile and quick, there are moments where consumption can be slower. They ebb and flow – learning to love and embrace that is one key to Social Media Management.

You might be wondering – “but A.J. aren’t you a people manager?” To answer your question, yes, currently I am a people manager. At my core, I am a creative, a story teller, and a visualizer. I want to get back to living a life of creativity, at a company that is mission driven, people forward, and empowering to their teams.

I’m proficient in Adobe Creative Cloud (especially Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator), Figma, Final Cut Pro, Google Drive Suite, and Hootsuite. I’ve managed all socials including Instagram, X, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Shopify pages, and blogs.

Before you go on to my selected work, the last thing I’ll say is, I hope to share a meal with y’all! To sit at a table of dreamers, doers, and get-after-it-stoke-chasers, would be an honor. (+ if it’s a potluck, I’ll bring lumpia and pancit!)

🫂 Cheers,
A.J. Aldana

Stanford Sierra Camp (SSC) is a summer camp for Stanford Alumni and their families. SSC had no brand identity before my time in this role. I have since created branding guidelines, create social media posts on Figma, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Find a sampling of posts I’ve made for SSC below!

wikiHow is the internet’s free ‘How to’ guide on how to do almost anything. Below is a selection of posts I created using wikiHow’s visual asset library, high volume search queries, relevant publicity for the company, and followed trends. I made all these posts in Figma and created a style guideline that was used after my departure.

Below you’ll find 4 of my favorite videos that I made for TikTok. Our strategy with TikTok (before engaging in an educational partnership with TikTok) was to create videos that were filled with shock and awe – appealing to Gen Z users of the app. We often communicated with various BrandToks across the platform via comments and engagement with their audiences.

A play on lawyer @erikakullberg’s TikTok series of the aside, “shhh…they don’t know I know this!”

👀 44.1k views
❤️ 2379 likes
💬 66 comments
🔖 59 saves

A lightly sardonic approach to our otherwise very serious articles to share joy with our viewers.

👀 34.6k views
❤️ 2836 likes
💬 121 comments
🔖 56 saves

Some photos, videos, and illustrations that I’ve done over the years. For UX/UI case studies or in-depth processes for selected works, see the rest of my portfolio.

A photo I took of the beer flight I fabricated in the shape of Lake Tahoe’s elevation profile. See full project here.