The designers of higher education deserve a medal for the design flexing we pulled off in 2020. As the "fluid situation" continuously evolved, we learned to bob and weave. This project was one of those...

Early in the pandemic, we realized a massive environmental graphic and signage campaign would be needed to help both students and members of the community understand the rules when visiting campus. As the chaos swirled around us, we decided to start by building visuals around a social distancing campaign. An example from another university was shared with me, and I was asked to come up with "our version" along with a few other options for consideration. 

Social Distancing Spartan Style was playful and utilized familiar objects from around campus to represent what a 6-foot space looked like.

Six Feet to Save Four was witty and simple, but it wasn't entirely inclusive. 

But going through the creation of the first two led me to one REALLY Spartan something that could offer students a mental picture of what a 6-foot space looked like...the BIG guy. Naturally, he was also in lockdown, so I wasn't able to do a photoshoot with him where he could lay on the ground to illustrate that space. Instead, I tried designing him like he was a cardboard cutout that someone had in their room and Make Room for Sparty was born.

(bob and weave...bob and weave)

As the year progressed, we were able to get Sparty into the studio to be photographed with his mask on, but it didn't look right on camera. So our Alumni team reached out to the vendor who created our illustrated Sparty, and we moved through versioning to come up with the masked Sparty above. 

But we also needed floor vinyl for the INSIDE of buildings...

And vinyl stickers to note which seats could be used to create physically distanced seating in common indoor areas...

And then we needed some door and wall signage. Thankfully, my colleagues in Infrastructure Planning and Facilities (IPF) had already started to develop some signage, so I merged Sparty into what they were making.

(bob and weave...bob and weave)

I created a second version of several products to meet the needs of more formal spaces like campus museums and administrative buildings. 

The division of style was also applied to our social media graphics. Sparty had a more playful voice while the formal version carried a more serious voice.

Things moved so fast that I had to write some of these myself. The last one about Spartans wearing masks was one of mine that made it onto a few of the larger banners installed across campus (these were not my designs but I was part of the art direction). 

This campaign was truly a campuswide effort. Our IPF team members were mobilized to install signage across campus as they went about their work throughout the week.

And the landscaping crews were involved in making sure the lawn signs were installed throughout the grounds.

I worked with my design partner in IPF, Nick, to design the final lawn signs, and then he applied that art to the larger vehicle entrance signs. At this point, I continued on the project in more of an art director capacity.

While he continued to focus on the production of new signage requests and coordinating installation, I continued to manage other parts of the project and started the equally heavy lift of organizing files in preparation of sharing our designs for campus use and creating the Campus Tool Kit.

The tool kit required me to think through who would be using the files and how so I could equip them with easy-to-use assets. This meant thinking through things like how a file would be printed to make sure something wouldn't get chopped off around the edges, or providing art assets separately for designers but templating other items for non-design team members. Once campus communicators had access, they were able to download anything they needed to create their own custom messages and specialty signage.

As new products were installed, we started seeing them show up on social media and some of the responses were pretty great.

I recently looked through the folder for this campaign and discovered I have nearly 1300 individual pieces of content stuffed in there (and that doesn't include everything Nick created on his end). I'm still amazed at all we accomplished in such a short time and I think Nick would agree with me that it was a lot of work but an important task. 

2021 Silver Addy

The images included throughout this post come from multiple sources. Most of them are mine or snapshots from social media, but I would like to thank Nick Schrader and Derrick Turner for capturing some of the work scattered about campus.