Clarkson announces its new faculty hires with postcards that are mailed out to peers in higher education each semester. At the end of 2015 I took a design that hadn’t been refreshed in several years and gave it some attention. I eliminated excess clutter in the design of the front, placing more emphasis on the text. I simplified the back of the card, allowing me to made the faculty portraits larger.
There are three unique designs in the series – for Clarkson’s school of Arts & Science, Engineering and Business. I approached the series’ design holistically, and chose three different photographs of the same building, Clarkson’s Student Center. This strikes the right balance between showing difference and sameness.
All three pieces in the series needed to feel similar because they are representative of the Clarkson main brand and show how the university as a whole invests in the future. They also needed to be unique, to show the difference in schools and how they each contribute to the university’s academic reputation through these announcements.
To push the project further along and to put more emphasis on how the university looks to the future of technology and education, I created comps for an accompanying email announcement to strengthen the university’s web communications and sustainability efforts.