Challenges

Charger Challenge was a two-day 2022 fundraising campaign at Albuquerque Academy. My task was to create a campaign with distinct and recognizable branding that nested within the organizational branding guidelines. (The organization is undergoing global rebranding, moving to a more accessible, friendly, and minimalist design.)

The target audience for the Charger Challenge fundraiser was the alums and community members who either have established careers or are retirees. Therefore, I focused on traditional designs with an especially heavy emphasis on minimalism and legibility. In the past, formality, clarity, and grammatical accuracy have been important to this particular group.

Finally, as Advancement was the responsible department, I was charged with honoring their vision for the campaign while also offering effective design.

Outcomes

The campaign ultimately raised around $140,000 for the school. The graphics and designs for various channels helped build campaign awareness and generate community interest.

For reference throughout the process, I produced a style guide. It is meant to be useable even without design experience, as Advancement sometimes needs to create designs without support.

Additionally, the branding is intended to be robust enough for future fundraising campaigns.

Campaign Logo

Advancement’s vision for the campaign logo was to use the campaign title, Charger Challenge, and emphasize the a’s to reference Albuquerque Academy. In the past, they often did this by adding two a’s instead of one, ie, “ChAArger ChAAllenge.” This had a few challenges. For one, some potential donors mistook it as a typo. Additionally, there was a possible association with unrelated organizations that use the acronym “AA.”

I addressed this by replacing the a’s in Charger Challenge with the Academy logomark. This honored Advancement’s vision of emphasizing the a’s, as well as following the overall Academy branding and emphasizing the campaign’s connection to Academy. Academy colors could be retained, and overall clarity was improved.

Print Designs

For the campaign, there were several print designs, including banners, goodie bag stickers, and flyers. Additionally, the fundraiser was a perfect use case for my previously-printed Academy step-and-repeat banner. To help generate buzz for the event, I created a series of posters that went up around campus for weeks prior.

The Poster Series

Advancement’s original concept for a poster design had a significant amount of information, so I decided to break it into a three-poster series. Each poster had a different emphasis, and I designed a key icon for each one to visually represent the purpose and content. The posters were primarily focused on generating awareness about the different ways to get involved in the Charger Challenge, with an emphasis on the date of the tournament.

With the exception of the Topgolf logo on the first poster, I illustrated the poster icons. As part of the larger Academy branding, I have been using the “Academy Heart” as a signal for action, especially (though not limited to) volunteer and sponsorship opportunities.

The backgrounds of these posters were white, as it was in-house printing (unable to print full-color backgrounds), so the icons were black. Therefore, I used the reversed version of the “Academy Heart” with the full-color logomark. My logic here is explained in more detail in the style guide at the end of the case study.

Digital Images & Email Campaign

For the campaign, Advancement needed email and social media banners. The emails were the primary method of communicating details and CTAs, and were essentially variations on a theme. I also designed a graphic for social media.

Style Guide

While the school colors are black and red, the key color is “Academy Red” or cmyk(15,100,85,5). For the primary branding, red backgrounds are preferred for their energy and ability to catch the eye.

To distinguish the Charger Challenge campaign, I chose black as the background color, with red for highlights, accents, and icons. However, the in-house printer has limitations on printing large swaths of even color. Therefore, anything printed in-house uses a white background with red and black text, accents, and icons.

As a more formal, professional atmosphere is preferred by the target audience of mid-career and retired community members, which a simple black background can certainly provide. To maintain this simple and professional style, icons are preferred over photos wherever possible, as is a clean, minimalist style.