Making a Case

As I showed you last month, a recent project I worked on was a new brochure that helps new staff present a case for InterVarsity's ministry on campus to new/potential donors. I showed you my first pencil sketch draft last month, and here's the final product!

The challenge in a brochure is that many people merely skim it rather than read all of the content. My job as a designer is to design it so that people can skim and get all the critical information, but also feel invited into reading more. I did this by using plenty of pictures, breaking text up into small paragraphs that begin with bolder, bigger fonts, creating variety of layouts to keep people interested, and visualizing some of the content using graphic elements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Infographic: A year in review!

It's been a big year! Pat and I got married, traveled over 15,000 miles, and contributed to many events and programs that led thousands of students to faith in Jesus. We're grateful for your partnership in prayer and financial support this year, and for your friendship and support as we joined our lives together in marriage.

(click to view larger)

We're looking to reach our budget by the end of June by raising another $5,000. Would you prayerfully consider giving a one-time year-end gift, or begin a monthly gift as we start a new fiscal year?

 

Sometimes, pencil and paper works best

A current project I'm working on is an updated brochure for new staff to give to potential ministry partners who want to learn more about InterVarsity. The first part of my design process for a project like this is to think through how the text will be separated onto each spread, based on the content of the text. Once I've made a plan for that, I start sketching each spread and making an estimate of where the text will go and how it will work together with images and other elements. These sketches will be my guide as I work in the computer to actually lay this all out with the actual text and real images. Sometimes working with paper and pencil is a lot faster when you're in the initial stages of design!

Stay tuned for the final product by June or so.

An Animated Infographic

Global Urban Trek Promotional from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

Last fall I shared with you an infographic I created to promote InterVarsity's Global Urban Trek program. This spring it was turned into an animated video, with the talents of one of our team's talented interns who specializes in animation. Check out the video and see if you can recognize the elements from my original infographic!

My (Ongoing) Ethnic Journey

Being a biracial couple, ethnicity is something my husband Pat and I talk about on a regular basis. We often discuss the tension we feel in InterVarsity. Although we work at the national headquarters, we don't see InterVarsity's value for multiethnicity demonstrated in very many practical ways at the office. For example, most of the leadership in the office consists of white older males, which has a large influence on how meetings are run, how people are supervised, and how decisions are made. Many ethnic minority staff feel voiceless and don't have a way to express certain painful experiences related to being an ethnic minority.

However, in recent weeks and months, many of our coworkers have started discussing these issues together. And Pat, being on the planning committee for our weekly chapel, initiated a three-week series on the topic of multiethnicity.With some of our coworkers, many of whom are also ethnic minorities like me, we worked on a series that would help the office be more aware of the dynamics that go on (such as white privilege), as well as encourage our coworkers to engage in this issue and pursue something better together.

For the second week of the series, we planned a panel discussion, and I was one of three ethnic minority staff who spoke about our experience at the office. We felt very vulnerable sharing some painful and hard things, but I was encouraged by the response from others who said thank you and who followed up with questions and conversation.

Since Pat and I don't often work together, we were energized to collaborate on this project. We hope it will bear fruit in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.

You can listen to the panel here
(about 45 minutes long). 

The other two coworkers on the panel are David Hui and Haley Compean, facilitated by Lisa Rieck.

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you do get a chance to listen to this!

Please continue to pray for InterVarsity. Although we have come a long way in making our organization more welcoming and inclusive to all ethnicities, we still have a lot to learn. May God give us grace as well as conviction to see His kingdom come in its fullness.

Branding Dilemmas

I'm so sorry it's been a LONG time (four months!) since I have blogged. I got out of the rhythm when I was planning my wedding, and just have not stayed on top of everything since getting married!

I'm working on a number of various things but one larger, more nebulous project that's on my plate has been to work towards building a strong brand for InterVarsity. Branding involves a lot of things that go beyond just a good logo, but as a designer, I am focusing on the visual part of our brand, which does involve our logo and other visual markers of who we are.

To show the scope of what we are dealing with, I did a little research on social media to assess where InterVarsity was at with our brand. I grabbed the logos or images being used by all of our InterVarsity chapters all over the country. Then I compared that with the images being used by chapters of two other large campus ministries - Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) and the Navigators.

Here's what I found. (click on images to view bigger)

Cru:

Navigators:

InterVarsity:

As you can see, InterVarsity has the least consistency across our various chapters' presence on social media. Contrasting it with Cru, which has extremely consistent branding, and Navs, which is less consistent but at least has a recognizable shape/logo that exists across its chapters, I realize that our task is a large one. Something that's particularly challenging for us is that InterVarsity's logo is long and thin:

It is not conducive to the square shape that social media is moving towards. In fact, our current solution for the national InterVarsity Facebook and Twitter accounts is probably not super ideal:

So, I've got a big task ahead! Please pray that God would provide wisdom and insight into how to solve these issues, and that those who hold influence and power in our ministry would be on board with finding good solutions, allowing me to help increase our brand recognition, and hopefully as a result, our impact on campus.

What if we chose what Jesus chose?

Infographics are a type of project I particularly enjoy. I love the challenge of organizing information in a visually elegant way to communicate something. The weekly infographics I work on usually have some element of humor or fun, but once in a while I also get to work on more "serious" infographics.

Recently I worked with Marissa, who leads InterVarsity's Global Urban Trek program, to create an infographic that communicates the need for ministry in slum communities, the mission of what the Trek does, and the results of how God works through the Trek. The main message of the piece challenges readers to consider the life that Jesus chose - a life of poverty.

This was particularly energizing project to work on. Working with Marissa was great because she gave me freedom to use my design expertise (some clients can be a lot more picky and try to tell me how to design something, which isn't very helpful.) Marissa began by telling me her overall vision and hope for the piece, after which I did some of my own research and sketching. Our collaboration created something that both of us are very excited about. The hope is that this infographic will be useful both in recruiting students to the Trek, and also casting vision to potential financial ministry partners.

The color scheme uses the 'earthiest' tones in our color palette, but I also included blue for some brightness.

The printed version features an image of a slum community in Manila on the cover.