Merit Awards

Each spring, the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) holds an awards ceremony to honor the best students among the undergraduates who have graduated in the previous calendar year. I have designed the awards, ceremony programs, invitations, wayfinding signs, and the event itself since my first year working at UB, in 2015. I have continually updated the event theme to ensure that each year’s students receive an original award; these photos from the past five years also clearly show the evolution of my design sensibilities.

The year before I began work at UB, the CAS Merit Award certificates and program were produced in Microsoft Publisher, using star- and laurel-themed clip art to represent that the awards go to the most deserving and most stellar students. My first year in charge of the ceremony, I updated the design while maintaining the star motif. I also incorporated the university’s branding elements at the time in the color scheme and typography.

For 2018, I created a geometric, semi-translucent diamond shape in Illustrator to reflect the new theme — that these students are the gems of our college. Having a new design each year dates the awards in a good way. Only the winners from their graduating year will have the same look and feel for their awards, which makes each award unique and more valuable. The University rebranded over the course of the 2017-2018 academic year, as reflected in the typography and color palette for the 2018 design.

For the 2019 ceremony, I returned to the stellar theme, but this time more abstractly, using gradients and amorphous shapes that appear to be in motion to unite the print pieces with the motion graphics projected on a loop behind the presenters during the ceremony.

Client: Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences