Asbury College “Change” Admission Campaign, 2005.
In fall 2004, I left the D.C. area for a design job at Asbury College, a small college in a small town outside of Lexington, Kentucky.
One of my big projects was design for a new admission campaign. My role on this campaign was overall look and feel, design of the print collateral, and some photography.
I was blessed to work closely with small team of enthusiastic and talented creatives. We really were all thinking on the same wavelength, which is rare. In hindsight, this was perhaps one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. And one of the benefits of being part of a small team was the chance to dip my hands areas outside of my design job. No one was required to “stay in their lane” and we were all the better for it.
After several months of work, The completed Change campaign launched with great enthusiasm and positive response in the Fall of 2005. The campaign even garnered two CASE design awards to back up that positive response.
It’s been 17 years since the Change campaign launched, which both seems like forever ago and yesterday all at once. So I ask myself, in retrospect, “How well does it hold up?”
Change was trendy in its time. The color was on point. The messaging was sharp and direct. The distressed look referenced other relevant design of the time. The photography was strong. The info letter, view books, a mini-application, postcards, a DVD, and other materials and all mailed beautifully in a custom designed DVD jacket folder.
Aspects of this campaign feel slightly dated by today’s standards. The distressing does not feel as intentional as it could; it feels overloaded. I was experimenting a lot with photoshop brushes at the time, and it shows. The textures on the photos detract from the strength of the photos. The colors hold up on their own, but so much together (ie the green and brown, for example). But this campaign was not designed today, I remind myself.
So does it hold up? I say its mostly YES! If you strip away some of the distressing and fun with photoshop brushes, there is a core of solid layout, solid messaging and strong photography that really captured the tone of the institution and its students. And that is something I’m proud to have been part of.
Academic View Book.
Academic View Book. Cover and selected spreads shown. Asbury College, 2005.
One of the features I still love about this book is the use of a custom, distressed, uni-case font. Which of course is a nightmare for editing. If I had to do it again, I’d probably dial back the distressing some for better legibility.
Visit Brochure
Visit brochure. Cover and selected spreads shown. Asbury College, 2005.
The horse photo on the cover is one of my favorites from this campaign. I only wish I had done something different with the type and textures. For this campaign I often shot stills while our videographer shot video of the same scenes, which created consistency across mediums.
I cringe at my design choices here, but I show this because it shows the evolution of the campaign. This brochure was one of the earliest Change pieces, where everything had clearly not been resolved.
Print ads. Asbury College, 2005-2007. You can begin to see the evolution away from the chaotic distressing to a more subdued, yet still photoshop-brush-heavy styling from 2005 to 2007.