30th Anniversary

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Approaching Washington State University Vancouver's 30th anniversary, my coworkers and I brainstormed how we could celebrate the milestone year-round. We hosted two massive events for our 25th and needed something different that would have a longer shelf life. I pitched collecting "30 Reasons to Love..." and "30 Things You Might Not Know About..." WSU Vancouver. Seemed like a cute idea at first, until we had to actually gather the content and facts. Yikes.

We asked colleagues, students and alumni what they loved most about WSU Vancouver, and hunted down 30 lesser-known facts/notable stories from the campus's 30-year history. I had a vision for how I would collage these factoids/sentiments and designed two different layouts in the fall and spring issues of our magazine, Northwest Crimson & Gray.

We also leveraged the "30 Things..." at a special event held at the end of the year. It was a painstaking typesetting project but also super fun.

I learned my lesson--don't pitch an idea about gathering a large quantity of things from a lot of people... It's a lot of work.

At a special anniversary event, we highlighted faculty research featuring community partnerships. I designed 24"x36" posters featuring 10 research projects, which were then mounted and displayed at the venue. I provided faculty with a template and organized their content to highlight the "problem" their research tackled, implications, solution, local/national impact and benefits of partnership. With a wide variety of research topics, it was a game of Tetris to make all 10 posters look consistent.

I also designed a custom 30th Anniversary edition lapel pin to mark the milestone.
Pins were handed out to staff and faculty to kick off the 30th, and to our 2019 graduates at their commencement ceremony. Shout out to Custom Pin and Design for creating a beautiful pin for us. Ready for the 40th...

Go VanCougs!