Five Years Removed

In the summer of 2017, after nearly eight years, my job at Houghton College—a small Christian college in rural western New York—abruptly ended.

That was five years ago to the day! Time has healed what was a hard time for me professionally and personally, and I am now able to revisit my work from that period. At the time of my departure, I was midway through a new admission recruitment campaign—the “You Will.” campaign—where I served as Art Director.

My vision for the look and feel of this campaign was inspired by idea of celebrating the college’s rural location, rather than apologizing for it. Houghton is not too far from Buffalo and Rochester, but far enough away to really unwind, reflect and experience peace. The natural beauty of the region shelters a tight-knit community of authentic, down-to-earth students, faculty, and staff, and fixes memories in the hearts of thousands of alumni globally.

While the campaign officially launched in August 2016, it was still early in its lifecycle and was continuing to evolve when my time at Houghton ended. And so, I will always think of this one as unfinished work.

“You Will” was a great concept that got rushed into production before being fully fleshed out. Another year in the hopper and I think this campaign could have been nearly perfect. Regardless, I’m incredibly proud of the foundations laid in the ideation process with the team, in some of the first materials produced, and some of the future work that launched from that initial style into exhibit space design, social media and video.

Here are a few examples of my early design concepts, a few examples from the first wave of print, and a few components—such as video (above), exhibit space and social media—which were developed later and I was not as hands-on with, but closely follow the original vision of the campaign.