Branding a college football team.
Integrating individuals’ compostable household waste into a green network that includes a community garden.
Building a campaign for an ongoing food drive by encouraging, via a popular online comic strip, grocery consumers to purchase “Just One More” item to continually bolster food banks.
Putting together apps to help you shop, cook and travel more enjoyably and efficiently.
Creating tools to keep young girls out of the sex trade, and to extricate them if they’re already there.
Those were just a handful of the roughly two dozen capstone projects on display June 3 in the Robert Family Events Room as graduating seniors in graphic design showcased and talked about the signature works of their academic careers in the College of Business.
The two-hour reception featured a steady bustle of students, faculty, staff and parents, all of whom could view the design work the students had put together and also hear them talk about the projects one on one.
The crowd included various business and design faculty, Dean Ilene Kleinsorge and community members such as Kari Rieck, the executive director for Court Appointed Special Advocates of Benton County. An interview with Rieck was part of the research conducted by student Chloie Parsons, whose work involved branding for nonprofits.
Project topics varied widely. Kevin Bradley’s focused on how to brand a college football team, specifically the one at Western Washington University in Bellingham. The university dropped football several years ago, but if it opts to restore the sport, it could do worse than to lean on the efforts of Bradley, who designed and prototyped everything from game schedules to decals to fan gear to team helmets.
Bradley’s premise is that strong branding leads to potent recruiting and an overall successful program.
He chose the topic simply because he’s passionate about college football. Professor Andrea Marks encourages students embarking on the two-term projects to begin by picking something that truly excites them – that’s the thesis stage – and then branching into considering the design aspects of what they’re doing later as the work progresses.
Marks marveled at the work of the 2015 graphic design cohort, and of OSU graphic design students in general.
“Their interest never wanes,” she said. “Our graphic design graduates go to work in graphic design; they’re not just getting a degree.”
