Client: Sewanee Registrar
Contracted by: Easy! Designs, LLC

Easy! Designs Team participants:
Project Lead: Aaron Gustafson
Project Manager: Kelly McCarthy
Jr. Designer: Jessi Taylor (that’s me)

Client: WE Rock Summit
Contract: Chattanooga Community Foundation

The Web Education (WE) Rock Summit and corresponding WE Rock Tour began in Chattanooga, TN in August 2009. For this project I teamed up with the very talented Stephanie Tate to brand and market the event under the creative oversight of Leslie Jensen-Inman. The Summit, hosted by The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was a great success, bringing in web professionals from across the globe.

The Summit itself was designed to function as a “think-tank” where educators and professionals could come together to discuss the future of web education and determine methods for making the future brighter for today’s web students. Because of the serious nature of the work to be done, we determined that the atmosphere should be fun, especially considering the time and effort volunteered by our attendees. The fact that our attendees were so willing to travel great distances and freely give up so much of their time, in our minds, makes them rock stars.

WE Rock Summit (photo by Dotson Photography)

To promote the events surrounding the WE Rock Summit Stephanie and I created posters, mailers, programs, banners, buttons and graphics for a free-standing lightbox. To honor our attendees we put together screen printed swag bags full of items designed to help them better enjoy their time in Chattanooga including: itineraries, branded water bottles, screen-printed t-shirts and beach towels.

For more details about the WE Rock Summit read the event mission statement on my blog.

It’s projects like this that remind me why I love being a designer. I like the challenge of putting together a visual puzzle and creating a cohesive whole out of a tangle of assorted elements. In varying degrees, all design projects present these opportunities. But some projects offer more than just the fun of assembling an aesthetically pleasing design. This project not only gave me a great design puzzel, but it also gave me a mission that I could get behind, not to mention the opportunity to work with a lot of outstanding people.

InterACT is a curriculum framework designed for college level study in web design and development. The curriculum is written by the education luminaries of The Web Standards Project Education Task Force (WaSP Edu TF), a branch of The Web Standards Project (WaSP) devoted to advancing the adoption of W3C Web Standards in the realm of education.

My job was to create a friendly and welcoming brand for the curriculum with the help and creative oversight of my mentor, Leslie Jensen-Inman. The working title of the curriculum was: The Web Standards Project Education Task Force Curriculum Framework or WaSP Edu TF Curriculum Framework for short. This was a bit daunting; I think it took me a week just to remember the order of the title.

For a while I tried to focus on the more accessible ‘task force’ portion of the name, singling this out as a call to action.

This option didn’t suit however because it wasn’t in the least bit friendly or welcoming. Too much “standards or else!” not enough “how may I help you?”

At this point, Jesen-Inman, wisely suggested we try renaming the curriculum. Often the best place to look for design inspiration is a well thought-out mission statement. From there we came up with the tag line: Connecting Education and Industry; and a few dozen brainstorming sessions later we landed on ‘InterACT.’ InterACT is a call to engage and to share, encouraging the growth of a community of people committed to  web education.

Client: Chattanooga’s Southside Community
Contracted by: CreateHere

MAINx24 is an annual 24 hour festival on the Southside of Chattanooga. The festivities center around historic Main Street and include music, food and a community parade. The first MAINx24, sponsored by CreateHere, took place in December of 2007 with Widgets & Stone providing the original identity package. For MAINx24 2008, the Southside neighborhood took over and requested a fresh look for the brand, including: a new color scheme, new graphics and new promotional materials.

The CreateHere team partnered with the community to double the size of the event from the previous year by producing posters, newspaper ads and schedules in English and Spanish, as well as a billboard, banner and teaser handbill of the schedule to promote all of the events.