My pal of nearly 20 years was getting hitched. He commissioned a custom invitation, which I was over the moon to design. I sat down with the couple at their lovely venue to pick their brains about the vision for their invitation.
The bride-to-be went on to describe a very lovely and traditional invitation with scripty font, formal language, and foil-lined envelopes. My pal’s face could not hide his feelings as he was hearing this vision. The bride-to-be and I noticed. She was the most gracious and self-aware bride-to-be I’ve ever worked with. Ever. She sweetly asked him what he was envisioning. And she genuinely wanted to know.
He went on to say “I want it to feel like us.” He described his love of movies, music, and how he plays the bass guitar. He pointed out her love of books and being a librarian. He suggested something a little more casual and humorous. And that is them. Casual (like Birkenstocks casual). Fun. Silly. Wicked smart. Full of love and humor.
As long as I’ve known my pal Simms, he has signed off every email, phone call, or in-person meeting with the phrase “rock on!” In-person, this greeting was punctuated with the “horns” hand symbol.
How could his wedding invitation NOT include his most beloved catch phrase? At his request, the “horns” symbol was modified to become the sign for “love”, which they had begun using with one another.
Click here to view the Simms wedding photos.
After a two-year hiatus of in-person participation, IU was back exhibiting at SC. SC20 was 100% virtual. SC21 was in-person but IU opted not to exhibit. With the budget savings from years 20 and 21, we opted to make some alterations to our structure and floor space.
Our colleagues’ shared their wish list for booth functionality. An additional conference room, soft seating areas, and collaboration spaces were top priorities.. A 10’ X 20’ conference room was added, walls and cabinets moved, and new graphics designed. Because we weren’t buying fabric panels for the whole structure, graphics for purchased panels needed to marry up to existing panels. University branding adorned the outer ring of the structures and the big pops of color and content were accents in the two conference rooms.
I’m extremely proud of how this transition took shape. I managed to create a stunning booth with our vendor Skyline Exhibits from Indianapolis all while going through cancer treatments and chemotherapy. Not too shabby.
The Jetstream2 supercomputer is a cloud-based and on-demand system available 24/7. A user can even create virtual machines that look and feel like their lab workstation or home machine, with thousands of times the computing power.
The cabinet doors are aluminum and structured with a stair-step face interspersed with blue glowing lights. The blue lights indicate that the system is operating normally and the components are cool. Temperature cool. Not Fonzi cool.
The stair-step panels create a unique design challenge. Placement of graphical elements need careful consideration. Without a straight view, the elements appear warped based on the angle of the viewer.
Jetstream2 has two rows of twelve cabinet fronts. There are several archival images of IU researchers, scientists, and computing students interspersed with vector graphics representing their work as well as other types of work supported by the Jetstream2 supercomputer. One panel set is representative of earth and wind. The other panel set is representative of sky and water.
I was asked to do a design favor for the Office of the President. Like so many offers that can’t be refused, this favor was both exciting and terrifying at the same time.
A special print piece was requested for the memorial service of former Indiana University Bloomington Chancellor Emeritus Ken Gros Louis. I am not an IU Alum, but as I did my research I quickly learned that the man was beloved.
He was special. And so, his memorial piece needed to also be special.
At the onset, my perimeters were 1) that it be a booklet, 2) that it be relatively small in size, and 3) that it contain a flat-style drawing technique that was admired from a previous piece I had designed a few months earlier. After researching Ken, I learned about his love of poetry and books as well as his effect on those around him. I kept finding people’s wonderfully kind and effusive words detailing the impact he had on them as students, faculty, or employees.
It was these words that became the message of this memento. Using photos from the University archive, friends, and family, the booklet took shape. The cover was designed to look like one of the many leather-bound books that adorned his overflowing shelves. The cover icon encapsulates his love of reading and writing as well as his passion for the LGBTQ+ community. In 1994 he established the Office of GLBT Student Support Services at Indiana University.
The center spread depicts Ken’s office — complete with overstuffed leather chair, his beloved books and mementos, and photos of his family — drawn in the flat-style that was perimeter three.
For more about Ken Gros Louis’ life and legacy at Indiana University, visit: https://kengroslouis.indiana.edu.
Click here to view the full booklet.
Ever get a project assigned that is couched as “a fun one”? That was how this project started. In theory, this should have been fun. It’s a gift box after all. Yet, somehow…not fun. At every turn there were issues — the size of box, the style of box, the printing/wrapping of the box, printing SNAFUs, pandemic-related supply chain slow-downs, unknown dimensions of the main gift it was being designed to hold, etc. Thankfully, it all came together in the end. Can’t have the new university President getting a bad first impression. Not on my watch.
The package included a commercially-available, black gift box with magnetic flap closures. The inner and outer wraps were custom designed and printed on a thin vinyl. Included was a tray insert made of thick, black-edged foam core with half-circle notches for easy removal from the box. The tray supported two letter-sized booklets — one newly designed and written for this presentation. The two booklets were held together with a custom-printed 2-inch belly band.
Under the tray were all the gifts. The main gift — a Mophie Powerstation Go Rugged with air compressor — was inserted into a dye-sub printed, microfiber drawstring bag. The bag was designed with matching motifs to the box and booklets. Other gifts included a tote bag, pen, coaster set, and a custom journal notebook designed by my lovely colleague Alaa Fadag.
My best good friend Bubba Gump (a.k.a Alicia) has a daughter training to be a ballerina. Alicia would help me with my floral arranging side hustle, and in return, I helped the studio with their graphic design needs. Any help was good help, as the studio was stuck in a brand rut.
Internal studio politics between retiring and incoming directors delayed the new branding at the time I started designing the first pieces. The designs for Alma’s Attic do not feature the new logo, as it had yet to be designed. However, I had a vision for the studio’s brand. For the Alma’s Attic pieces, I used fonts and colors that would eventually make up the brand palette. By keeping colors and fonts consistent, subsequent pieces feel on-brand and allow room for creativity within each design.
The studio is a non-profit organization, so budget was always a concern. The business system uses a beautiful opalescent pink paper that is readily available from an online vendor. Posters and flyers rarely have a bleed. Programs only use color on the cover. Anything that can be printed in-house is. And larger print jobs are sent to a commercial printer I use regularly for my daily job which offers better pricing than the studio’s local copy shop.
Hey ladies…you know how we don’t like to see photos of ourselves pregnant? Well…photos of ourselves in the middle of cancer treatments are much worse. At least in these I’m sporting my Little Steven-style head scarf, so there is a whisper of cool. No retreat. No surrender.
Oh, the wall. I did that too. Special thanks to Malinda Husk who wrote the words and kept me sane while this was in the works.
The IT Empowers IU booklet was created as an introduction of University Information Technology Services (UITS) to IU’s new president. The booklet overviews the many facets of tech at IU from learning technologies to research technologies; regional, national, and international networks, cybersecurity and risk mitigation, media digitization and preservation, and all things in between.
The booklet was designed as a companion piece to the UITS Bicentennial Annual Report designed by David Orr. The cover design is an adaptation of the bicentennial report’s cover which featured die-cut rectangles mimicking an old-school computer punchcard. This document didn’t have the budget to splurge on a die-cut cover, so the look was achieved with more traditional print methods. Ink. And lots of it. The printer needed four passes through the press to achieve optimal ink saturation on the charcoal cover stock.
A clever story was crafted around the demonstrations planned for our Supercomputing booth. The demos were woven together by two superheroes, a captain, and a universe of planets. Each demo took place on a different planet within a fictional universe. The spacecraft is piloted by the hardscrabble, tattooed Captain Foster. He tasks superheroes Fletcher or Marshal to fly to a planet to tackle a task. Each task is the research being demo’d in the booth.
The book’s layouts are a combination of hand drawn illustrations, plus vector and raster graphics. A traditional layout was designed for the final spread which overviewed each demo’s abstract for those readers who didn’t enjoy the storyline and journey.
Superhero Marshal was named for astronomer and IU faculty member, Marshal Wrubel. Wrubel was one of the organizers and the first Director of the IU Computing Research Center, which was renamed in his honor in 1973. Superhero Fletcher was named for Jessica of Murder, She Wrote fame. The writer of the comic book was a legit fan.
Written by Janae Cummings
Drawings and design by Maria Morris
We’ve got a couple leaders who like to out-do each other. My teammate, David Orr, designed this gorgeous report for our Networks division. Well, our Research Technologies AVP requested a rival report. I was given the keywords of “eye catching and relevant for IU research, clean, and graphically appealing.” Additionally it was asked that the report be visually compelling such that someone who sees it would want to pick it up and read it. That is my career goal in a nutshell.
Click here to view the full report.
IU’s main Wi-Fi network is set for retirement. An awareness campaign was launched to inform the IU community of the switch to the eduroam network. The campaign had two goals: early adoption, to minimize the IU Support Center staff burden on the retirement date; and communication, to emphasize continued network security and ease of the switchover process.
The creative uses vintage travel posters, visually informing the audience that the eduroam Wi-Fi network reaches much further than IU Secure. Classic and emblematic, the artwork awakens dreams of adventure, beauty, and wanderlust. And for our international student body who come from more than 110 countries, they are a reminder of home. With eduroam, the network is a traveling companion.
To keep the campaign fresh and exciting, a new destination was featured each month. The locations are all within eduroam’s 106 worldwide connected territories. The Polaroid-style frames add a sentimentality fueled by a love of analog media, instant film, and travel souvenirs. The format is nostalgic for older faculty and staff while being vintage-hip for students.
Project Manager: Maria Morris
Designers:
Emily Sterneman: Scenes designed—Mt. Fugi, Paris, Aurora Borealis.
Lauren Huber: Scenes designed—Washington D.C., African safari.
David Orr: Scenes designed—London.
Maria Morris: Scenes designed—Sydney, San Fransisco, ski resort, Taj Mahal. Designed all print and promotional items. Designed bus wrap.
One season ends and it’s time to plan for the next year’s creative. In January, the seeds of the 2018 presidential holiday card were planted. My office wouldn’t typically have any involvement in such a project. It would have fallen to the main Comms office at IU. Because the content requested as the theme of the card was an initiative that my department was leading, the IT Comms team was engaged. In the initial email from the university’s Chief of Staff, it was suggested that I be brought on board as the designer.
The theme was the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI). The mission of MDPI was to digitize a large subset of the thousands of archival audio, video, and film objects in IU’s collections and make them available to scholars all over the world.
For more about IU’s MDP Initiative, visit mdpi.iu.edu.
After months of prep and prototype creation, the team and I presented my two design concepts to the president. The simpler and more cost-effective concept was ultimately chosen. The chosen design was a silent movie film reel. The accordion-folded card was printed on translucent vellum stock with die-cut sprockets lining the edges. The card included a translucent vellum sleeve which slipped into a translucent vellum envelope. The sleeve was necessary to create enough opacity for the addresses to show well on the envelope.
So when film degrades, the blue and yellow dyes fade first leaving the film looking a pinkish red. Additionally, the sprockets can split. These details were added to the film reel to create the feeling of age and damage. To keep the sentiment light and festive, decorative holiday elements were included on the request of the president.
Written by: Amanda Chambliss
Designed and project managed by: Maria Morris
Printed by: IU Document Services
Two design concepts were presented to the president for his 2018 holiday greeting card. The first was an accordion-folded silent movie film reel printed on translucent vellum. The second and more elaborate concept was a pop-up card that played music when opened.
The card’s design was a realistic, top-down view of an EMI RE 321 portable open-reel tape recorder. This tape recorder was part of IU’s collection of vintage media devices being photographed for posterity as well as used for the digitization and preservation of audio, video, and film objects in IU’s collections through the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI).
MDPI was the theme of 2018 holiday card. The card’s front view is the tape recorder in it’s closed configuration. I added a real grosgrain bow and gift tag to mimic a holiday package. As the card is opened, the viewer is treated to the inside view of the EMI tape recorder, a pop-up vellum reel of musical notes converting to binary data, and the song Chimes of Indiana sung by the IU All Campus Men’s Chorus (circa 1989).
The song choice was significant. Firstly, the Chimes of Indiana was written by IU’s own Hoagy Carmichael and remains a beloved part of IU tradition. Secondly, the audio track was one that was preserved as part of the MDP Initiative. And thirdly, it was festive for the holiday season without having religious leanings.
The client loved this card idea, but ultimately had to pass on it as it was a budget-buster. I have a knack for such designs.
Click here to hear the recording.
UITS at Indiana University celebrated its 20 year birthday in October of 2017. The party was the closing lunch reception of the yearly Statewide IT Conference. The party included an audio/video timeline, cupcakes, balloons, remarks from President Michael A. McRobbie, and a surprise gift.
If you happen to wonder how long it takes two designers plus one professional balloon artist to fill the IMU’s Alumni Hall with a festival of balloons, the answer is five hours. Five long nerve-wracking hours hoping no balloons would pop.
Click here to view the timeline document included in the surprise gift box. If you enjoy Easter eggs, the timeline is a basket full.
Each year, IU’s technology organization exhibits in the trade show portion of the high-performance computing conference known as SC. In 2016, I had the pleasure of designing a new booth structure and floor space for IU with my colleagues’ needs in mind. I worked with Skyline Exhibits in Indianapolis for nearly all aspects of the booth’s construction.
This was one of the hardest challenges of my career — working with physical space that humans have to pack, transport, construct, then inhabit before deconstructing, packing, and transporting it again. The booth components needed to be modern, sleek, modular, changeable, and easy to assemble. We also needed to able to repurpose sections of the booth for smaller trade shows and smaller booth sizes.
My goal was for the graphic design to be calming in a room full of visually noisy tech displays. There is a balance of the stark whites with the pops of red, minimal wording with simple branding, plus loads of functionality. The booth boasts a 10’ X 10’ machine room and locking storage closet, a 10’ X 10’ conference room, 2 free standing kiosks , 6 demo stations, and loads of built-in cabinet storage.
The swag item for our Supercomputing exhibit is a hotly debated topic each year during booth planning. We like to choose swag that is geared for children and has some tie to Indiana or the tastes of computer nerds. Conference attendees seem to gravitate toward swag either because it’s from IU or because they like to bring stuff home for their kids.
Whether it’s a mini basketball hoop, cape and mask, or a light saber, our conference program is designed around the swag item.
Our clients love, love, love to wrap buses. Never mind that it costs as much as buying a car. There is nothing quite as satisfying as seeing your “thing” (whatever that may be) cruising by as big as Christmas on the streets of campus. Even though this product is tricky to design, the end result is a joy to behold. I understand why the clients love “their” buses (umm, “my” buses.)
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t ever pulled out my phone to take a picture when one of my designs happens to be at a stop light in front of me. Don’t worry. I’m stopped too.
IU’s School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) merged with the IU School of Informatics and Computing (SoIC). The merging of these top-ranked schools created one of the largest and most prestigious informatics schools in the United States.
Despite the strength of their degree program, many alumni and donors have felt disengaged now that their School of Library and Information Science has been rolled into the School of Informatics and Computing. This feeling was evidenced by a decreasing number of donors to the ILS program.
Leaders from the IU Office of the Vice President for IT and CIO, the IU Libraries, and the IU School of Informatics and Computing charged our team with creating a publication that resonates with alumni and donors, signals to them that library education and innovative librarianship is alive and well at IU, and spurs them to re-engage with IU.
What’s the best way to get folks to re-engage? Our team agreed that profiles of successful alumni with impressive careers was the way to go. Dubbed “Faces,” this theme enabled us to tell IU’s library education story through interesting people, and weave impressive facts about the ILS program, facilities, and opportunities into the profile copy. Building on the “Faces” theme, we designed the booklet to allow readers to play with alumni portraits, mixing and matching them for interesting results.
Excellent photography was a vital element of the project, and we flew our photographer around the country to snap headshots and workplace portraits of the profile subjects.
In addition, we sought re-engagement through a strong call to action with a social media twist. The back page of the booklet urged readers to get in touch because “We miss your face!” alongside mirrored paper to reflect their own face. We encouraged readers to snap a selfie and show us how they’re part of the changing face of library science—and then upload it Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter with the hashtag #MyIULibFace.
Project Manager: Daphne Siefert-McCanse
Design: Maria Morris
Photography: Jenn Taylor
Writing: Ceci Jones
Tag team back again. Whoomp! There it is! After a two-year pandemic hiatus, the Statewide IT Conference was back in person. There were 1070 attendees registered from all IU campuses, 587 of which were in-person and 483 were virtual. $173,000 in sponsor money was raised.
The conference offered 75 programs including talks, receptions, pre-conference sessions, breakout sessions, and Birds of a Feather gatherings. There were 23 exhibitor tables at the Tech Expo including sponsors and colleagues from the IT at IU community.
The website had six major site phases (Save the date, Call for Proposals, Registration opens, Schedule-builder live, Event, Post-event.) There were over 20 email sends corresponding with phases of the website and other key details of the event.
On advice from our organization’s Green Team, we departed from our typical conference lanyard to hold our usual 5” sleeve for name tags. In years past, our conference schedule/program was sized to fit in the sleeve with the attendee’s name badge. Because of this change in direction, we tried a new approach to entice attendees to take a printed schedule/program. I designed a small 2-pocket folder. One pocket held the program. The other pocket held a custom die-cut sheet of pop-out chess pieces. The folder’s rear panel sported the chess board. We handed out nearly 99% of the printed copies.
Conference mark: Maria Morris
Folder and chess board concept and design: Maria Morris
Program layout: Arturo Contreras
A few years back I had the great pleasure to work closely with another designer named Arturo Contreras. Arturo and I had a rare synergy where we could hand designs back and forth to one another without pain or strife or jealousy. I’d get stuck and he’d make it unstuck. He’d get stuck and I’d unstick it. It just worked.
2015 was the 20th anniversary of Statewide IT Conference. The 20/20 theme was a retrospective as well as a looking forward to the future of the tech industry. Starting with a stylized eye chart as the main conference theme, my team and I used vision and sight as inspiration for other design details. Arturo and I custom crafted a pattern in which to hide secret messages. Red reveal glasses were custom printed and donated from a local swag vendor. The glasses were packaged with our conference program which was designed to fit into our name badge sleeves. This clever packaging allowed attendee’s quick access to the schedule of events. We included fun facts hidden in the secret pattern, only seen through the glasses, onto directional and welcome signage throughout the conference venues. A commemorative T-shirt was made available for purchase including the conference logo hidden in the red reveal pattern.
Graphic design: Maria Morris, Alex Chesterfield, and Arturo Contreras (pictured below in the commemorative T-shirt)
So, I have an idea. It seems crazy, but it could be cool. What if we take the drips and blob shapes in our conference logo, make them giant, hang them from the rigging of the stage, then shine light on them? That’s a thing, right?
Try taking that to a vendor. Oh, and the lighting director. Well, the lighting director was so jazzed to see my crazy paper mock-up that he complimented me. First I thought his compliment was sarcasm, but no. He was being genuine. I guess his typical clients are a bit more nebulous with their lighting ideas, if they have one at all.
So drips. These shapes were cut from corrugated plastic sheets. The drips that look suspended from other drips are connected with skinny metal rods that you’d use for yard signs. That was my vendor’s genius. The shapes are affixed to PVC piping that was spray painted black. Two sets of drip clusters are hung on separate riggings and overlap slightly. When lit, the drips take on the colors and patterns that are shone upon them. Cool, right?
When University Information Technology Services at IU was transitioning to Canvas, the new LMS, an awareness campaign was implemented to encourage faculty to be early adopters of the new system before the retirement of it’s predecessor, Oncourse.
The “Paint with a new Canvas” campaign was designed with the goal that faculty would appreciate the classical art pieces and not be inclined to immediately throw away the promo. The campaign uses four works of Impressionist artworks, freely available in the public domain. Impressionist work was chosen for it’s painterly, carefree quality and low risk of political or religious overtones.
Creative direction: Maria Morris
Graphic design: Maria Morris and Alex Chesterfield
Logo design: Alex Chesterfield
Writing: Greg Moore
The inaugural Mosaic Faculty Fellows luncheon was styled on a small budget. Rather than pricey floral arrangements, paper centerpieces were crafted instead. Twenty large and ten small centerpieces were crafted for under $70.