Every year, the McGaw YMCA holds their Annual Gala, which is their signature fundraising event.
The task: Based on the theme the Gala Committee chose – ‘Join the Climb’ – create a graphic concept and apply it to all print and online collateral that is created for the event.
At first, I struggled with this task. The way the Gala Committee described the theme, they seemed to want graphics that depict people climbing up snowy mountains and my mind immediately jumped to ski lodge visuals. I didn’t know how to elevate this theme to something that looks elegant enough for a fundraising gala. But the deeper I dug and the more understanding I gained of what exactly the committee wanted, the better I understood that their focus was helping people get over a symbolic mountain.
The solution: I came up with two very different visual themes. The one below is what the committee agreed on. Since there were a big number of very different pieces of collateral for this event – from slideshows, to invitations, to emails, to outdoors banners, etc – I kept the graphics simple and to the point, allowing for great transferability across all platforms, which made it easy to adopt the theme for whichever collateral was needed, without losing the concept.
