JBU Honors Program T-Shirt Design
I designed two T-shirt designs for a local farmer's market, created for the purpose of screenprinting with no more than three colors.
Event & Packaging Design
CLIENT: ACE SCHOLARSHIPS
WORK DONE: EVENT PROMOTION & EXPERIENCE DESIGN
A majority of the work I did for ACE Scholarships consisted of event design. ACE's primary form of outreach and connection with their donor base is face-to-face contact, often accomplished through annual events across the nation. Since Colorado is ACE's headquarters, I would typically start the year designing for Colorado events, and the collateral I created would set the theme, tone, and approach for out-of-state events. For example, we started off 2023 with the Colorado Women's Luncheon and the Colorado Annual Luncheon, and the collateral I developed carried over to summer and fall events in Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and more.
2023 Women's Luncheon
The 2023 Women's Luncheon occurred in Denver in early February. Featured above is a recap video (put together by the wonderful video team at PIN Business Network), highlighting several of the pieces of collateral which I created.
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At every event, there are certain design pieces that remain largely the same across the board, regardless of location, year, theme, etc. I typically start out with a set of large signage directing attendees to the entrance, to the registration booths, to VIP seating and reception, to the exit, and to follow ACE on social media. Each event features table number signage on a stanchion to assist guests with seating, as well as a simple Powerpoint presentation template that the ACE team can edit for their guest speaker. Everything would be on theme with the rest of the event collateral.
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I would work closely with the ACE Events team on several pieces of collateral that would be custom-made for each event. For the Women's Luncheon, I designed a pledge card (directly below) in the style of a composition book, featuring an ACE scholar on the front. The pledge card would then be collected in a book-shaped box with a sleeve that I designed to look like a textbook, including another scholar and her story on the back cover. An emphasis of this luncheon was the power of reading, so the book theme was found throughout the collateral I made, such as bookworm-style table number signage and bookmarks that could be taken home as party favors.
2023 Colorado Annual Luncheon
I had the honor of not only designing for ACE's largest annual event, but attending it as well. This event - which also took place in Denver, in early May - was completely sold out with over 1,500 attendees. The collateral for this luncheon was by far the most demanding, taking about six weeks of full-time work to design to completion, and I'm sure even longer for the ACE Events team to brainstorm and plan before they even put in requests for collateral. The collateral consisted of the usual large signage, a Powerpoint for the guest speaker, a Powerpoint to feature the 140 event sponsors, pledge cards, and table signage, but it also included several unique pieces.
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The Events team aimed for a schoolhouse feel with this event, looking to utilize their distinct pencil imagery and notepad patterns wherever possible. I made the final call on new fonts that we incorporated with the rest of ACE's branding, since the Events team was looking to give everything a handwritten feel.
Together we created impact signage that was featured throughout the venue on notepad-style signs over six feet tall, with a larger-than-life pencil leaning against the notepad (depicted below). This impact signage shared motivating and moving statistics about America's education crisis and how ACE's impact is counteracting said crisis. The notepads caught your eye and served as a great photo opportunity for guests.
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In addition to these gigantic pencils, we featured a pencil on the pledge cards as well. I was more skeptical of this project since I figured it felt a bit "cartoonish" and wasn't the best use of space, but the design overall came out very nice. The students depicted on the front spoke at the event that day. In more than one scenario, the Events team will approach me with a request or a vision that I find difficult to fulfill, and I am not afraid to counteract with my reasoning as to why their vision may not produce the strongest design, but we ultimately find a compromise. This was one of those scenarios. The design ended up serving its purpose successfully, even if I might have approached the project differently.
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Pieces of collateral that were normally simple to develop and lay out became tricky due to the number of sponsors and their logos. Every ACE event typically features some sponsors, but rarely as many as 140. The large directional signage always includes a "Thank You Sponsors" piece, and I did a fair amount of Tetris in order to ensure that each sponsor was represented appropriately. The table number signage was also a tricky task due to the amount of tables and the need to feature the two largest presenting sponsors at the bottom. We landed on making the signage have a notepaper look, with a dotted-line traceable font for the number itself and a pencil looking as if it is about to trace the number.
![IMG_6355[93].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7da54a_fb7d4a721e464abfa6752d30e51de7eb~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_0,y_0,w_3024,h_3600/fill/w_216,h_257,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/IMG_6355%5B93%5D.jpg)
Another piece of collateral included a small infographic placed at each table setting, done in the style of an old-fashioned library card which slid into a simple envelope. I had a lot of fun with this one, since this gave me the opportunity to play around with Illustrator's capabilities in a creative way. We gave the event logo a stamp-style feel, and I carried that look over into some of the content on on the card inside. We paid attention to even the smallest touches, such as the little schoolhouse doodle "drawn" at the bottom of the card, as if done by a grade-school student or the sticky-note highlights with a drop shadow and a slight paper texture to make it feel as if it popped off the page.
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The last large piece of print collateral which I helped with was a simple pillow box package designed to hold a cookie for each of the guests. I did a few rough mocks (see video to the right), exploring the placement of the notepad paper, before proceeding with placing the design elements on the package itself. I spent a while researching and testing out different Photoshop methods to create a sketch-style filter for the student speaker photos on the front of the boxes, finally landing on one that felt realistic enough. We use the same sticky-note details that we had done for the library card and the impact signage.
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I also spent a significant portion of time working on digital assets that unfortunately cannot be featured here, but these pieces included a digital email flyer, a digital program that served as ad space for the event sponsors, and an event invitation. Overall, this was by far the most challenging long-term project that I tackled for ACE, but certainly the most rewarding in terms of sharpening my skills of project management, problem solving, and collaboration.
