California Lutheran University AIGA club hosted Design for Good at the Center of Entrepreneurship located in Westlake Village, where designers rebranded local nonprofit organizations in a span of 24 hours between April 9 -10.

Cal Lutheran AIGA club, which stands for American Institution for Graphic Artists, was inspired to bring the event to Ventura County after President William Houser and Vice President Alexandria Pico attended a Design for Good event hosted by the Los Angeles AIGA chapter, according to Pico.

“We wanted [our peers] to understand how amazing of a feeling it was to put so much time and effort into something purely for the good of another. The entire event is completely probono and voluntary, and knowing that we are able to do something we love, like designing, to benefit others in the community is such a nice feeling,” Pico said in an email interview.

Pico said that the three nonprofit organizations at the event included United Way of Ventura County, The Children Come First and Community Conscience. Pico said the event lasted for a full day because designing persuasive marketing and branding material is not easy.

“There is a lot of background and knowledge that goes into the process so being able to gather all the information needed, process an idea and a direction to work in, and then ultimately creating an aesthetically pleasing product is a huge accomplishment for a 24-hour period,” Pico said.

Although the three nonprofits were assigned to each team of designers, junior Nichole Snook said she was happy designing for her nonprofit, which was the United Way of Ventura County, whose mission is to improve education, income and health.

“[UWVC] was pretty set with their brand identity, but basically needed a brochure with all their important information into one. The majority of the 24 hours was us going through the copy text and trying to weed out anything that was not relevant. It was quite a challenge to include all the information our client wanted while also making the brochure look good,” Snook said in an email interview.

At the end of the 24-hour blitz, Snook said her team had come up with a creative solution for their nonprofit, which was that a modern update should be added to the brochure, which would influence someone to read it.

“We also came to the conclusion that they needed not just one brochure with all the information in it, but two: one for volunteers to help out and another for donors. We were able to create one brochure with all the information the client specified she wanted in it, as well as a second brochure where the copy text was more concise and to the point,” Snook said.

Sophomore Allie Kuritani, who was on the designing team for The Children Come First, said her nonprofit aids foster children in Ventura County and that although the event was exhausting, it was still fun to do. Kuritani said the goal for her nonprofit was to make the organization more professional looking and that her team had hourly critiques to make sure that each team member’s designs were unified.

“Our job was to create business cards, letterheads and brochures, along with a logo. We decided to choose a color palette as well to embrace the business-like aspect. Our solution was to make the brand very simple with only using three main colors and two accent colors and color blocks to tie all of the collateral together to be cohesive,” Kuritani said in an email interview.

Kuritani said she enjoyed working on a team rather than working solely by herself as each team member helped one another to create an overall great end design.

“The designing process consisted of printing out pictures of designs that we liked for inspiration. We picked the color palette, the typography and made a logo as a team. After we got the basics down, we split off individually and we each designed either business cards, letterheads or a brochure,” Kuritani said.

Pico said the hourly group critiques were crucial so that the three teams would not spend a lot of time going in a direction they would decide to stray from later on.  Pico said after a long day of hard work and dedication, each team was able to provide a wonderful product.

“We had a final presentation at 8 a.m. Sunday where all designers reviewed the final works of each team. After the final presentation, we all said our goodbyes and went home to get some rest. Each team is getting ready to present their final products to the nonprofit organizations they were teamed with, at our Design for Good reveal party on April 22,” Pico said.

Leina Rayshouny
Staff Writer
Published April 20th, 2016