UC Santa Cruz has been one of my longest-running clients — a relationship that's grown across departments and disciplines over several years. Each project brought its own brief and its own audience, but the common thread is making dense or complex information feel clear, accessible, and worth reading.
BASIC NEEDS CAMPAIGN
Client: UC Santa Cruz
Product: Print and digital ad campaign
2021 CASE Award of Excellence
UCSC's Basic Needs program provides financial support to students who need it — but first those students had to know it existed. This campaign was designed to reach them across campus buses, cafeterias, newspapers, and digital platforms simultaneously, which meant building a flexible system that could adapt across a wide range of formats while keeping every execution feeling personal and direct. The photography, shot in front of murals around campus, gave the campaign real character. Each of the five featured students needed a full suite of assets across every format variation. The campaign received a 2021 CASE Award of Excellence, given annually to outstanding work in communications and marketing across member institutions worldwide.
WILLS & TRUST GUIDE
Client: UC Santa Cruz — Development Office
Product: Print booklet
A legacy giving guide for UCSC students, families, and alumni — one of those documents that needs to feel approachable and warm without losing its institutional authority. An existing version needed a full overhaul: updated content, refreshed layouts, and a redesign to bring everything in line with UCSC's current brand guidelines. The challenge was making financial and legal information feel human enough that people would actually read it.
Client: UC Santa Cruz — University Library
Product: Annual report booklet
The Grateful Dead Archive lives inside the UCSC library — one of the more wonderfully unexpected institutional collections in the country. For their 5th annual report I inherited templates from earlier issues, refreshed the design to feel current, and laid out the new content while keeping the publication's established voice and visual continuity intact. Working within existing templates is its own discipline — knowing when to push and when to leave well enough alone.