Four Klein College of Media and Communication students spent their summers working with Higher Than 7, a local production company centered on Philadelphia and its creative community. Founded in 2009, Higher Than 7 has a subscription-based video streaming service that showcases entertainment, educational and live performance content. The Klein students who worked with the company were brought on to contribute graphic design and social media expertise, skills they have honed both in and out of the classroom.
Higher Than 7 was co-founded by Anis Taylor, who previously worked in music production. Taylor loved to bring together music, visuals and storylines and posted music videos to YouTube for years, but then started thinking about monetization for the content he and others were creating. This led to the concept for Higher Than 7, a video streaming service that provides local artists with a niche platform to showcase their talents. Taylor says the focus of Higher Than 7 has always been about “tapping into the talent in Philadelphia.”
Taylor connected with Klein students through Kalie Wertz, assistant director of external affairs at Klein, through Taylor’s role as an instructor at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School. Taylor then submitted information about internship opportunities at Higher Than 7 that was disseminated to students at Klein. Taylor says that the students who reached out to the company were easy to connect with and had impressive backgrounds in technology, which helped ease their transition into their remote internships.
Rachel Rehrig, a senior advertising major in the art direction concentration, was one of three graphic design interns for Higher Than 7. Along with Tonja Butler, a junior advertising student and Jared Bowers-Hodges, a senior advertising student, she was responsible for designing content for the company’s productions and monitoring and contributing to the company’s social media pages. Shane Goldfarb, a senior advertising student, also interned with the production company.
During the summer internship, the graphic design interns focused on building Higher Than 7’s digital presence . Rehrig was primarily concerned with designing the logos, identities and digital playbill for The American Crisis: The Musical, a politically-conscious play the company produced that is also airing on other outlets during the presidential election cycle. Rehrig also did graphic design work for The Rise of the Dragon, a kung fu-style film that stars the season two winner of Higher Than 7’s acting competition show Who Wants To Star In A Movie. Rehrig also enjoyed helping the company’s social media presence grow.
“It was super fun because this is the first internship I got to work with where I was collaborative with the concepts and the ideas that they were posting on their social media. It was a really big initiative for Anis to start this new concept on Wednesdays, which was called ‘Social Awareness Wednesday’...we were all just contributing ideas or just content we can post on this specific Wednesday, where we can reach out to their audience and talk about really important issues that are happening today in popular culture and [the] political landscape and social landscape in America. So that was a really, really fun experience,” Rehrig says.
Although Rehrig enjoys working within the boundaries of traditional art direction, her internship with Higher Than 7 gave her inspiration to venture into a production-oriented industry down the line.
“Because Anis and his company is associated with production and film and movies and stuff like that, it really inspired me to look further into that with my career personally because I've always had a hidden interest in film and production and media,” Rehrig says. “But with art direction, it's mostly print and it's not really dealing with commercial stuff and actually filming.”
Higher Than 7 has several noteworthy productions, including Dance A.M., a morning dance show that highlights local dancers and encourages viewers to start their day with activity, and Oldhead, an original series examining the complex relationships between urban dwellers in Philadelphia. Klein students who are interested in an internship with the production company can reach out to Anis Taylor via his email at [click-for-email].