As the Foundation’s New Media Director, I worked directly with Paul Rusesabagina and Sean Tenner, the Foundation’s Executive Director to develop an evocative visual style for the Foundation.

I developed branding for the Foundation based on previous iterations of a logo and style. My goal was to create a memorable visual identity and maintain it with consistent typography and color control across all media.

The Website

The website layout is a bit experimental – I did away with the horizontal and verticle navigation bars of the old site to reduce the amount information appearing on the front page and target our visitors towards registration and donation. I also made the main item on the home page an irregularly-sized video, which catches the eye and provides a personal introduction to the site, giving visitors an immediate connection.

Some of my favorite parts are the smallest details… the favicon, the 404 page, the rollover effect on main navigation.

Film and Video

I filmed these videos with Paul Rusesabagina at Kurth Lampe in Chicago. I helped write the scripts with Mr. Rusesabagina, and edited the video for the website.

Print Materials

I created a separate but consistent look for print materials, simplifying the colors but keeping the large format type and style. These fliers have gotten a very positive response from foundation supporters and international powers alike.

 

(I am introduced by Goucher College President Sandy Ungar).

Designs were printed and used nationally in the field, at events such as these:

“Pro-Family, Pro-Obama” sign at a Michelle Obama event.

…as well as at the Democratic National Convention, where the Palm Beach Post noted:

As [Congressman Robert Wexler] spoke, many in the Florida delegation held up signs saying ‘Pro-Israel. Pro-Obama.’

Faith merchandise was sold on the Barack Obama online store, and was covered by CNN and the Drudge Report:

After the election, I donated some of the merchandise I created to be sold at an auction to benefit the Anti-Defamation League:

Designs

 

Strategy

Many of the lessons I learned while working on the Obama campaign were applicable to the school election.

I branded my campaign with a logo, recognizable colors, and a distinctive typeface that reflected my message. I made bold design choices early on, such as using a logo without my name on it.

I tried to do the most difficult work first… I spelled out my message and printed posters and booklets before other candidates had sent in their letters of intent. This left the majority of my time free to “touch” voters by contacting them online and in person.

 

I was able to define a coherent message for my campaign and reinforce that message with my branding on everything I produced. I was the only candidate to submit a letter of intent on letterhead.

This also forced my opponents to spend campaign time responding to my messaging and issues rather than outlining their own agenda. While I was speaking person-to-person with students, my opponents were scrambling to respond to my posters with their own posters. Posters don’t vote.

Design Challenges

Everything I produced for my campaign had to compete for students’ attention in an environment that is extremely familiar.

I approached this design problem by creating contextual campaign advertisements that stood out because of their relation to their space.

One particularly successful advertisement responded to a new college procedure. Over winter break, transparent folders were attached to the back of every dorm room door, and students were given a booklet of “Campus Emergency Procedures” to place into this folder.

In response, I produced a poster fitted for the envelope. The poster, “Emergency Procedures for a Questionable Search and Seizure,” was popular with students, brought my branding into people’s rooms, and drew attention to my central campaign issue.

 

I also created and handed out hundreds of eight page full-color booklets which I produced for free in the CTLT. These booklets gave students an opportunity to read about my ideas in greater depth and literally share those ideas with their friends by passing around their booklet.

Awards

I was selected as the First Place entry in the 2009 Goucher College Digital Arts Contest for this campaign, and received very positive feedback from the panel of judges from the Baltimore Professional Association for Design:

“Great use of color and type. Easy to read and draws positive, curious attention. Based on your explanation of your campaign, it is obvious you have a clear understanding of your goals and how to achieve them with design. Well done.”

“This is a really outstanding portfolio for a student campaign! I like it because it is fun, verbal, and visually well-integrated. It shows a lot of creativity and imagination, and I would love to see more of the student’s work like this”

“Great Job! Great Placement and Choice of Fonts!”

“this student clearly understands that outstanding design includes strategic thinking AND good typography and composition. Bravo”

“the site provides a portfolio of experience with good design ideas. the site itself is clean and comfortable to work with.”

Gallery

 

In other HvZ-related news, my 2007 documentary on the Humans vs. Zombies game at Goucher College has been picked up by Stupid Videos and made available to all customers of Comcast Cable.

In your “On Demand” window, go down to “Cutting Edge,” then find the “StupidVideos,” and you will see Humans vs. Zombies parts I and II filed under, “Sketch Comedy.”

You can see the full documentary on Vimeo:

Humans vs. Zombies from HvZ Source on Vimeo.

Enjoy… and, oh… as soon as there is an alternative, you should probobly consider dropping Comcast. Their service is awful.

After lots of meetings (and plastering the campus in rally signs), we successfully lobbied to overturn the policy in one week. Click on photos for more information.

 

I created a website, GoucherHousing.com, to give actionable options to students who wished to help. Over 300 students used the site to send e-mails to our administration, and many requested materials like signs and fliers, so that they could help advocate our cause while staying respectfully on-message.

 

The gender-neutral housing pilot program was expanded to two buildings:

As one of the national organizers of the Humans vs. Zombies game, my responsibilities include the design and maintenance of our online community of tens of thousands of players.

Scalability

I created the first website for the game in 2006 and rapidly went through five different versions of the site as the Humans vs. Zombies game exploded in popularity.

 

Our current site is able to scale to meet the demands of a growing community. It has a modular designs so that we can add or remove items as necessary.

The Website

The fifth generation of our site uses WordPress with some AJAX fanciness which can scale to the size of our growing community.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes on this site – integration with SMF forums, applications from the Google Maps API, a web store, JavaScript, dynamic content, and user-generated pages and posts.

Branding

As Humans vs. Zombies has grown in popularity, there has been increased demand for merchandise and other HvZ brand extensions.

It turned out to be tons of fun, so we decided to publish it for free online.

I designed the cards and the website, which you can see at http://www.CardsAgainstHumanity.com – CAUTION: Probably inappropriate for work!

The website uses the jQuery JavaScript library to cycle through the cards.

You can see the work I did for the campaign in my portfolio, and some photos I took along the way below:

UPDATE: You can see the finished documentary at http://www.HVZSource.com