Archive for ‘Design’

Abilene Christian University won eight awards, including three Grand Awards, in 2010 regional Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) competition. Awards were presented March 29 at CASE’s annual District IV conference in Austin, Texas.

University Marketing winners included Grand Awards in periodicals improvement (for “ACU Today magazine”), brochures/flyers/booklets (for “Introductory Viewbook”) and viewbooks (for “Academic Viewbook”); second place Excellence Awards in logo design (for “Study Abroad Logo”), publication design series (for “Live Up Campaign”) and color photography series (for “A Semester to Last a Lifetime” in ACU Today magazine’s Fall 2009 issue); a third place Achievement Award in viewbooks (for “Introductory Viewbook”); and a fourth-place Special Award in admissions, recruitment and promotional literature (for “Football Recruiting Guide).

CASE represents more than 3,000 institutions and 60,000 higher education professionals in alumni relations, communications, marketing, advancement services and development in 61 nations. District IV includes colleges, universities and schools of all sizes in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico and Mexico.

ACU has won 97 regional awards and four international medals from CASE since 1985. Its winning Live Up and viewbook entries for 2010 were developed in concert with Stamats Communications and Corey Patterson, ACU’s director of enrollment marketing.

At the Austin conference, Ron Hadfield, assistant vice president for university communication, and Scott Kilmer, director of new media, presented a breakout session about ACU Today’s work to present its award-winning magazine to readers in multiple mediums, including print, Web and blog formats. Hadfield is editor of ACU Today, and Kilmer helped the magazine develop its Issuu.com site in 2009. Issuu hosts major Abilene Christian publications here.

New way-finding signage has begun appearing on campus this fall to help visitors become more quickly familiar with ACU. Large purple signs now mark major entrances, and smaller purple signs help direct pedestrians to specific locations. University planners will continue to determine the location and information for both sizes of signs, and more will be installed as funds become available.

Colleges, departments and offices interested in helping accelerate the funding of way-finding signage for their visitors should contact Creative Services for more information.

A big “thank you” is due to Creative Services’ senior designer Greg Golden for developing these, and engineering them to be produced with the help of a local vendor, which saved the university thousands of dollars on each sign.

The exterior signage design also complements ACU’s interior signage program, which satisfies all requirements of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and presents a consistent look across campus for these important tools in helping inform visitors. There are four styles of ACU signs to designate interior rooms, each featuring Braille and molded letters/numbers raised from the sign surface. These customized interior signs must be ordered through Creative Services, where other samples also are available. Note that old-style “blade” signs above or near the top of doors are not ADA-compliant. Watch for more info about that to come.