Ostrich Meat at Schnucks
Ostrich meat – 98% lean and 50% less fat than chicken. Super healthy alternative to the traditional competition. And all farmed completely free range in the US. A little more expensive, but worth it for the taste alone. Seems like an easy sell? But try to get past the idea of one of these gangly giant birds on your barbecue instead of roaming the African plaines – not so easy now, right? Well this was the challenge for the students this time around. Ostrich meat was featuring at Schnucks and the brief was to design a marketing/promotional piece that would work as direct mail and also as an end of aisle pick up piece in the store itself.
A fun (and difficult) first step into Editorial Design. Understanding layout, grids, synergy of image and typography… and trying to push Ostrich meat as a lifestyle food choice!
Here are a handful of the more successful (and unique) creative solutions:
Peoria Ballet 50th Anniversary Brand Mark
To celebrate Peoria Ballet’s 50th anniversary, Ian Poulis,
Artistic Director, and his committee, were looking for a fresh brand mark that would work with, and later without, the reference to the anniversary. After a lot of back and forth collaborating, they finally decided on several designs by student Jeff Wagnaar, and ultimately arrived at the definitive logo shown in the photographs below.
Congratulations to Jeff on a great design for such a prestigious client.

Cradle to Grave
CFA Slane Annual Events poster
Always a pleasure designing this piece. Also more and more of a challenge each year to ‘top’ the previous one. We decided on a theme (of sorts) with this one – the anniversary of Lydia Moss Bradley. So the aim was to include her in the piece but not at the expense of emphasizing the strengths of our own college.
BU17
Interesting challenge – rebranding the university tv station. Formerly “Midstate Magazine”.
BUTV logo for non-news programming; used as a corner “bug” (so it needs to be easily readable when small) the mos,t but will also be used for full-screen station ID’s. 1:1 shape ratio.
BUTV News logo for our newscast, related to the main logo. Either square or round form factor but it will be seen the most on a 16:9 monitor on the news set.
Here’s what I arrived at:
High Fidelity
Graphic Design Exhibit: August 24th to September 24th 2015
“The artwork is perfect… but can I see a sheep or two next to the kissing lovers?”
A collaborative journey between the Theatre Director and the Graphic Designer.
By Gary Will
Although the relationship between the graphic designer and the client should invariably be a collaborative experience, the opportunity occasionally arises for this creative interaction to connect at a different level. In this case, the client was a Theatre Director and the ongoing brief was to visually promote two seasons of productions.
There was no ‘one size fits all’ with these eleven plays and musicals. Some required a more direct approach to visually explain the clients unique interpretation for each script, while others could be more abstract, leaving the viewer, intrigued and wanting to know more.
What each promotional piece had in common was a creative journey shared by both the graphic designer and the theatre director. Each time, dialogue and creative thought process continually passed between the two as each poster gradually transitioned and metamorphosed into its final rendition.
This exhibit is an opportunity to view and enjoy the final versions of those playbill posters, presented collectively, rather than one at a time – the end of that collaborative journey.