Designers: Will Troxler and Sara Beth Parks

Classroom experiences are essential for students, but while assignments and lessons lay a foundation for life in the working world, students can sometimes feel unprepared upon entering the workforce. But at Mississippi State University, a design class is giving students the best of both worlds: a professional project, with a professor to help guide them through.

It all started when Rebecca Davis-Kelly was asked by the school to create a new identity for the art department. Sensing an opportunity to provide a unique life lesson, she divided her students into teams of two, each tasked with coming up with a redesign. Says Davis-Kelly, “The [original] design used graphic icons to represent the tools each major typically employed, and we felt the graphic ‘isotype’ direction—a system of pictograms which communicates information—should be maintained and pushed further, along with the bold color palette used in the first design.”

Students Will Troxler and Sara Beth Parks came up with the selected solution. The duo designed a poster that engages its audience with humorous questions, and also doubles as a newsletter on the back for alumni. MSU’s seven art majors are color-coded in the poster, an element that is incorporated into the second piece of the campaign. When potential students send in a self-mailing postcard asking for additional information, they receive a more extensive brochure, containing color-coded emphasis-area booklets that match the poster and can be personalized to only include areas the recipient is interested in. Diecuts and a pencil binding on the brochure’s cover add sophistication to the piece.

“Sara Beth and I thought back to when we were in high school and began brainstorming what we would have thought to be cool and eyecatching. Vibrant colors, catchy quips, popular culture references and games seemed to keep creeping back into our brainstorming sessions. ... For example, the question ‘Do you prefer glazed or chocolate donuts?’ is used in the ceramics portion,” explains Troxler.

1. Original
A student designed the original piece as a one-time project. It then became part of recruitment materials for several years.

2. Redesign
New self-promotion materials have a fresh, more versatile look and can be tailored to meet potential students’ needs.

Mississippi State University Department of Art
Designers/students: Will Troxler & Sara Beth Parks
Art director/professor: Rebecca Davis-Kelly
Client: Mississippi State University Dept. of Art
Contact: www.caad.msstate.edu