Ann Brennan

Each year in the Department of Art & Design at UMD, 8 guests are funded to visit campus from across the nation. Because of the unique nature of the speaker series—with a variety of speakers across multiple disciplines—designing a consistent way to market this series presents many challenges. How do we make each speaker seem as interesting as the last? How do we get our students to care about speakers from all disciplines and not just their own? Studying systems design thinking, and honing in on the use of typography, we developed a visual system to not only inform about the VCLS series, but to give insight into all of the speakers and highlight the individuality of each speaker. We wanted to unify this series to really promote that each of these guests brings their expertise to UMD and can enrich all students’ educational experiences. This project was proposed before fully knowing the dramatic shifts that would happen with in-person events due to Covid-19, so we also navigated how this system translates to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Because of the streamlined approach in crafting a unique, yet easily adaptable, system for each speaker, the final result is both engaging and user-friendly. Also created during this study was a commemorative screen print for one of the graphic design guests. These posters not only serve as a thank you for our design guests, but also as a recruitment and retention tool for our student body.