A L T E R M A N I A

Home page banner design for the awesome nonprofit charity I’m currently interning at, DonorsChoose.org (as seen on the Colbert Report).

The science behind the copy:

For the headline, I wanted something catchy, cheerful, and evocative of generosity. I went with alliteration to cover the catchiness, the word “celebrate” to add cheer, and “learning” as a way to activate a prosocial mindset without referencing money. I recently read a psychological study mentioning that when words dealing with money are referenced, people tend to weigh extrinsic rewards (like recognition or avoiding negative evaluation) for charitable donations. On the other hand, when faced with verbs like “share” and “volunteer” and “support” people donate for intrinsic reasons (i.e. empathy, resultant feeling of well-being, etc.). Thus, I tried to stay away from words like “donate” and “give,” which have more monetary connotations. (On the other hand, both “donate” and “give” might have been more direct.)

In the byline, I wanted to offer the donor a chance to become part of a category (“*become* a supporter”) rather than pushing a one-time action (“support”). Another study I read and a social psych lecture I recently heard talked about the power of rewarding a disposition, or someone’s character – as opposed to rewarding a single behavior. This encourages future giving, since the donor thinks to themselves, “I am a supporter of year-round schools,” instead of “I supported year-round schools.” Again, with the word “support,” I tried to stay away from associations with money.

Finally, I put “today” at the end to add a sense of immediacy, so users won’t simply look at the message and put their donation off until later.

Design-wise, I wanted a celebratory, summery, childlike aesthetic to match the message. After a few iterations, I included “summer projects” with a button to make the banner more clickable.

Submission-garnering flyer for Macaulay Arts Night.

Promo vid I made in After Effects for the Macaulay Arts Night event I threw with my friend Mary Williams on March 6th. The vid helped both Septopus and our event page gain a pretty big following.

To promote Macaulay Arts Night, I took Septopus to Facebook with the help of co-director Mary Williams. What we found is that using characters is an extremely effective way to spread event awareness. Why? People find characters entertaining to interact with. They won’t just skim over important messages broadcasted by the character, because they’re fun to read! The Septopus now has over 500 Facebook friends – most of them in the Macaulay Honors College – so we’ll probably continue to use him to promote future endeavors. His British persona and love of scholarship turned out to be an unexpected viral hit.

The Septopus’s activity feed, showing updates and comments from Facebook friends. It also features the Arts Night website, which hosts pictures of the event.

Septopus’s personal info. As you can see, we have him linking to other student initiatives, like the Macaulay Literati Club.

Septopus in his worldly travels.

An entertaining interaction between Septopus and Macaulay student and Arts Night contributor, Gloria Cavallero.

In addition to Septopus, we also created a Facebook group and Facebook event to help mobilize contributors, curators, and attendees. The online campaign, along with the efforts of volunteer curators and my co-director Mary helped make Arts Night a success with attendees numbering in the hundreds.

To attract creative submissions for Macaulay Arts Night, I targeted Macaulay Honors students by propagandizing our honors lounge. In addition, the team and I garnered submissions with Facebook and a central Gmail account accessible by all volunteer curators. The Gmail aspect turned out to be indispensable: it allowed us to organize and sort submissions through labels, filters, and a google doc spreadsheet database; create an online submission form; and publish submission guidelines.

Giant block poster made from 9 pieces of printer paper. To the right are some smaller flyers for students to take.

I set the default home page on every computer to the Septopus video.

Some book-holders I set up and filled with flyers.

Flyer hung from the ceiling with masking tape.

I hung it up here for the night contrast between the pink background and the bright green foreground.

A picture of Septopus I taped up on an honors lounge window from outside. Sadly, nobody let him in.

Septopus-inspired art by Gerardo Sevilla. Me being my usual doofus self below. In the background on the left you’ll find a TV displaying a slideshow created by Jocelyne Jeannot. It featured all the visual works submitted by students.

Flyers for the Macaulay Arts Night event I helped run. The one on the bottom was the color, internet version, designed specifically for catching a user’s eye as a Facebook thumbnail. The flyers feature the Septopus silloutted in white (by that point, the shape of the Septopus had become familiar to pretty much anyone who would see the flyer).

Created with stock photography in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Design for a canvas like the ones stars pose in front of a movie premieres.
Click here to see it in non-digital space.

Big poster I taped up in the student government office at the place where everyone stops to get coffee.

Large poster that I made an impromptu stand for consisting of cardboard boxes and reinforcements, tiki torch stands, and lots and lots of tape. I placed it on a highly-trafficked area of the third floor in Hunter West where you have people coming and going from two hallways, the escalators, the bathroom, and the lunch room.

CUFF postcard.

Design and designer.

Design of the CUFF canvas behind the humans.

Left to right: me, The Cameraman, Mom.

The posters behind are a variant of the original poster that I created for the night.

At the bottom they say, “Welcome and Enjoy,” as opposed to submission info.