The projects below represent a small selection of the projects that I worked on with the Creative Services office under the Division of Student Affairs at Georgia State University during my time there as an intern, designer, and senior designer who oversaw others. I worked as part of a team in all of these roles, and most of us had a hand in every project at some stage in its development. Our Creative Director was Gretchen S. Cannon.
We kept careful track of file names, followed a set of guidelines, and developed projects across a wide range of formats. Often, a project would require a flyer, poster, handbill, and digital screen design. Our clients were other offices under Student Affairs.
This brochure was designed to introduce students to all the possible living-learning communities (LLC) that they could join. This was a program developed for students who want to live in an enriching community where they share goals or interests with their peers. The LLC is similar to a freshman learning community, but with more options and open to all students.
The left page draws the reader in with big, active images that highlight the benefits of the specific community. The call out block on this page contained a testimonial from a student who has lived in an LLC. This bar, the page numbers, and opposite page details all take their color from an element of the image on the left. This design gives each spread visual movement that gets readers to read in the order that we intended.
As a part of the Division of Student Affairs, we often handled the design of important documents. The above is the cover of the Code of Conduct booklet, which is a document containing rules and policies that is distributed to all students. Since it was updated very frequently, it needed a recognizable but noticeably different cover each time.
The postcard back to the right was created when the handbook and code of conduct moved online, so that students could be given something directing them to it.
The postcard back to the right was created when the handbook and code of conduct moved online, so that students could be given something directing them to it.
Our office developed this full page book ad shared by two related groups, Greek Life and Student Organizations. The ad combined two different promotional designs into one.
The Meet The Greeks promotional design was a very successful campaign that began as the flyer and poster in the above grid. After it was approved, more pieces were requested with that design. This included the shared ad above as well as an adaptation for the website below.
This design is still in use on the website as of this posting (April, 2018).
The Student Organizations design was developed partially based on the Spring Intercultural Relations postcard above, taking its bright colors, photographic elements, and city skyline into another project.
Student Organizations and Greek Life both presented the challenge of representing in one image the many, many facets of a diverse group. Student Organizations itself contains groups focused on business, leadership, the arts, sports, religion, and many more.
We drafted the design for Student Organizations with the idea of showing students viewers could identify with in image, and some of the involvement opportunities represented in silhouette. In the Greek Life design, we honed in on four ideals and benefits. This allowed for a tighter design using the colorful blocks. The two were tweaked to relate to one another in color and composition for the joint ad.
Our designs for Student Organizations continued in this vein. Each office had preferences for their designs that we worked hard to meet along with the individual demands of each project. Here, a similar color palette has been used but in a simpler and more geometric design for a series of events that needed the potential to update while maintaining identity. The design to the right could easily be updated by shifting or adding new colors and simply swapping out the text.
The look and feel also evolved in one-off promotions, such as the spring fair design to the right. While it has gone a long ways away from the original design in the ad and cards, it maintains a similar color scheme and borrows the diagonal tilt of the design to the left. Swapping out the dark blues and purples for orange gives a fresh feel while anchoring to the original idea with some of the same colors.
This trifold brochure design for Parents Association was another design that found its way into other places. This design needed to work well closed, opened, and with the third panel torn off and used to apply to the association. We designed it so that the front panel would open up to the three colored photo block on the far left, echoing the ideals on the front panel. These colors lead the reader through the brochure, ending on the application form.
The design was popular, so it was also made into a quarter page ad that lived in the same book as the Greek Life/Student Organizations ad. The design was condensed into its core elements for this small ad, which gave it more flexibility.
The design was adapted to the web banners seen above, which are also still in use at the time of this posting. These banners live on the landing page of the Parents Associations, giving visitors their first impressions of the site and the group.
Panther Welcome was a big campaign that was revisited yearly during commencement in the fall. As students came to the university for the first time, this campaign helped integrate them into the community. Georgia State has a campus in the heart of downtown Atlanta. Creating events and spaces for community building is of high importance, because the busy city life can make students feel distracted or less connected at times.
During the first month or so surrounding the start of fall classes, we needed a highly recognizable design so that new students could easily find Panther Welcome events and help booths set up around the area. This bright, bold, and minimal design in the GSU colors was our solution to that. The logotype was created by hand to be readable and eye-catching and the huge blocks of color were designed to be easily spotted from a distance.
Civic Engagement is an office that had many, many events to promote. We developed a few calendar-based flyers and posters for them per semester. Above is their Coffee Talk series for fall 2014 (left) and spring 2015 (right), the later being an updated version of the former. While the colors change depending on the season, the overall design aims to capture the casual air of the series where students can come enjoy coffee while learning about important social issues.
Around the same time, our office created the above calendar posters, one for a general events calendar and the other for Panther Breakaway. The later is a program where students take an alternative break, usually during winter or spring break, to travel to another city and do community outreach. We designed the posters to be very similar so that interested students would know to look to both for engagement opportunities.
This banner, designed in 2014 to promote Panther Breakaway, continued to use the language in the calendars above. The blue block behind the emblem is a direct call back, while the green block is new. The silhouettes and blocky type are more subtle relations to the original design.
In the Spring of 2015, Civic Engagement needed a calendar broken down into a few months at a time. They had even more events to accommodate, so we designed the 11x17 posters seen above. We opted for a cleaner minimalist design to help viewers read and absorb the information more easily, and we used a trendy geometric design that would draw attention without obstructing the calendar.
The office that we worked with the most was probably the Multicultural Center (formerly Intercultural Relations, as seen above). Nearly every design pictured above was designed for this office. We also worked with them on the MLK campaign listed as a separate project.
The events that the Multicultural Center worked on focused on the diversity of student experiences as Georgia State. As in the design above, it would often be a very specific issue that needed a custom image to communicate it at a glance. We needed students who saw this to recognize that it was an LGBTQIQA event about people considering their future families.
This design also needed to communicate the subject quickly and easily, but it also had to rearrange into various formats. Almost every promotion like this would start its life as the poster format you see on the left. Occasionally, we would provide a handbill, postcard, or 11x17 as well. Once our Student Center mounted digital screens in the halls, we began to make the horizontal format you see to the right for each project.
This series was developed initially by a student while I was working as a designer post-graduation. As a book series, these events needed a consistent design that could change to include various subject matter depending on the book. This design meets those needs while also swapping colors so that students notice the new posters when they are swapped.
Sometimes, we needed to promote an office instead of an event. This was also the case for the Greek Life and Student Organization projects. That was the case for Black Student Achievement, an office that needed to spread awareness about the resources they had available. With such a straightforward call to action, we made that huge and paired it with student photos showing engagement and academic achievement.
Another project like this was this Conference Services mailer, designed for internal and external clients alike. The front features the call to action, whereas the inside contains details about how to book a university space for your event.
