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.
ACE Overview Brochure
One of my earliest and lengthiest projects during my time with ACE was to revamp an old brochure design. This brochure would be sent out to ACE's most valuable tier of donors via mail, as well as be featured at various booths and events. It was a simple, 8"x8", 8-page brochure, providing up-to-date information on ACE's progress, programs, and policies. ACE's impact was spreading to new states through 2024, and more families than ever before were receiving much-needed financial assistance. Donors could use this marketing piece to see where their dollars were put to use and in what ways they could continue to support ACE and counteract problematic trends in education.
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This brochure already existed before I joined the team, but the content, layout, and formatting changed drastically in an effort to refresh this piece for a new year and for those donors who might have seen this content before. I assisted with calculating new statistics such as graduation rates and awarded scholarship numbers. I updated icons, developed graphs, and re-designed the map of ACE's impact across the nation (pictured above). I also redid the front cover, which was a tricky call since it would be the first thing a donor would encounter when pulling this brochure out of the envelope. Overall, I found this brochure refresh and redesign to be a welcome and enjoyable project for me, as it eased me into the process of making decisions and researching for expensive print campaigns early into my time at ACE.
Print Design
& Mailers
CLIENT: ACE SCHOLARSHIPS
WORK DONE: PRINT PROMOTION
A valuable asset which I brought to the team at PIN Business Network is my experience and skill in print materials. ACE Scholarships specializes in marketing to their large donor base through flyers, mailers, and events. Custom physical marketing pieces communicate value and intentionality beyond digital ad campaigns or web design. As a non-profit, much of ACE's funding came from face-to-face proposals, presentations, and occasionally from their consistent email campaigns.
My print designs walked a fine line between high-quality - showing donors and families how much they meant to ACE - but not too expensive, so that donor dollars still went to children in need, not fancy print pieces.
I loved doing print design, and I did my best to get a physical copy of my work when I could. When it came to events, especially those out-of-state, a lot of my work disappeared into the ether, but thankfully, I have a few pieces to feature here. The first is a general national mailing piece, and the other is a state-specific piece printed for an event but designed for usage in many contexts.
Tax Credit Program Informational
Brochures & Flyers
A project I took on later into my time with ACE spanned the course of a few months and served four different states. Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, and Montana all offer tax credit programs for individuals or businesses who choose to donate to ACE. These programs are a massive selling point for encouraging donations to ACE Scholarships in these four different states, and as such, I became the point person for promoting the programs through some print collateral pieces.
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I began with Arkansas' tax credit program (titled the Philanthropic Investment in Arkansas Kids Program, as of 2023), since this program would be heavily promoted at an event towards the end of 2022. The end and the beginning of a calendar year were sweet spots for pushing the tax credit program since credits were limited per year in some states - once donors started making donations and claiming credits, they would often run out by January and February, and none would be available for the rest of the year.
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ACE was not the only non-profit to benefit from promoting these tax credit programs, and as such a good amount of print and digital collateral existed to promote and explain the programs, but nothing that was uniquely ACE-branded. I wanted to design a piece that broke down the program, provided details and specifics, explained how to apply and how to receive credits, and even gave a brief background on ACE's impact and how the donation would be used. Since nothing like this had existed before, I headed up the research for what content would end up in this piece. I connected with the ACE Arkansas director and ACE's outsourced policy team, since language, statistics, and factoids needed to be accurate and thoughtful. When it came to policy, the wrong language could be interpreted as inflammatory.
The idea for the layout itself did not start with me. ACE's national director liked the idea of a 5x7 booklet that could slip into a pocket after an event or easily fit in an envelope. For the most part, we had seen other non-profits working with larger flyers and one-pagers, but he observed that they often ended up crumpled and unusable. From there, I played around with the idea of a QR code link to a digital application form, and/or a perforated, removable back page with the application featured on the back. We had a lot of content and material to fit into a small design, so I had to be conscientious of space and the value of the content itself.
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As depicted above, Louisiana had imitated another non-profit's four-page flyer design in a pinch, which I had assisted with designing. However, when the time came, I redesigned all the old content featured on the 8.5x11 layout and placed it into the new 8-page 5x7 brochure. The overall effect is cleaner, a better use of space, and more consistent with ACE's branding. I had to be careful of font size and room for writing due to the demographics of ACE's donor base - generally older.
Old Design âžš
New Design âž™
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This project by far has been one of my favorites with ACE. I loved being in charge of the research and pulling together content, statistics, facts, testimonies, and forms, which I could then redesign and organize to fit into a designated layout. Starting fall of 2022 and as of June 2023, the QR codes and QR links to donation applications have been accessed 150 times for Arkansas, 100 times for Kansas, 300 times for Louisiana, and 60 times for Montana, exclusively through of these print pieces. Those numbers are a testament of success to me, that these pieces were informative and impactful to new and existing donors alike. I never thought I would end up knowing so much about tax credit programs and policy, but here I am, and I'm much better for it!
