Campus marketing, eight months

Marketing at Mashouf Wellness Center

I was the graphic designer for Campus Recreation at SF State, making the flyers and stories that got students into trips, classes and jobs. This is what survived, and what I would change.

Role: Graphic Designer
Where: Campus Recreation, SF State
Tools: Canva, Adobe Suite, Asana
When: Oct 2022 to Jun 2023

One building, nine thousand students, and something new to announce every week

Campus Recreation runs the gym, the pool, the climbing wall and the intramural leagues inside Mashouf Wellness Center at SF State. I was its graphic designer for eight months, part time, while I finished a design degree on the same campus.

The standing job was two or three events a week. A backpacking trip, a hiring push, a schedule change for the summer session, a table in the lobby on Halloween. Each one needed a set of assets: a story for the department's Instagram, which about nine thousand students followed and which posted three times a week, and print for the moments students were already inside the building.

I made the assets. Social media managers and marketing managers decided when they ran and where. That split turned out to be the most useful thing about the job, because it meant I could not rescue a weak piece with better timing or a second push. Whatever a sheet did, it had to do on its own, in the couple of seconds somebody gave it on the way to a treadmill.

The Campus Recreation student staff behind a table at a Halloween event, with printed flyers standing on the table. — Campus Rec student staff at a Halloween tabling event. The flyers standing on the table are mine.

Four sheets is what survived

I did not archive my own work. Three years later this is what I still have: four finished pieces, no working files for most of them, and nothing from in between. I would keep receipts now, which is why this page is a look back rather than a rebuild.

Group Fitness summer class schedule on a sky, hill and sun background, with five white day columns under red headers. — The summer Group Fitness schedule, the Campus Recreation hiring sheet, the Sierra Buttes trip story, and the Boathouse student manager flyer. Each one gets a closer look below.

Purple Campus Recreation hiring flyer listing seven open positions above a QR code. — The summer Group Fitness schedule, the Campus Recreation hiring sheet, the Sierra Buttes trip story, and the Boathouse student manager flyer. Each one gets a closer look below.

Every one of them looked finished, and every one asked too much

Three years is enough distance to see the one habit running through all four. I drew each sheet as a complete document, when the job was to make a single decision easy. It cost me nothing at the time because nobody complained. It is the first thing I look for now, on anything I make.

Campus Recreation is hiring

Seven open roles, a QR code, a URL and three email addresses, on one letter sheet at the front desk and in the department's feed.

Now

One heading per department rather than seven titles in a row, and no printed job codes. A code changed and the sheet was dead the same afternoon.

Detail of the hiring flyer: seven job titles, Student Manager through Climbing Wall, each set at the same size and weight with a job code beneath it. — Every title at the same size and weight, with the job code as the only thing separating them. A student looking for one job has to read all seven.

Group Fitness, summer session

Five day columns, twenty-two classes, May 29 to August 20. It went up in the lobby, on the digital screens and in the feed, and it is the only piece here that got a second pass.

Group Fitness summer class schedule on a red, blue and green gradient background, with five white day columns under red headers. — First pass. A gradient mesh runs the whole sheet, so a white card sits on red on Monday and on green on Friday.

The same Group Fitness summer schedule on a sky, green hill and sun background, with five white day columns under red headers. — Second pass. Sky, hill and sun. The cards land on flat blue and hold the same weight all week.

Same grid, same type, same five columns. All that changed is what sits behind them, and it moved the sheet from something you read as a colour across the lobby to something you read as a schedule.

Now

Let the class name carry the row and push the time and the room back. A student looking for a nine o'clock is reading twenty-two lines to find five.

Detail of the top of the Tuesday column: three classes, each set as a class name, a time and an instructor at nearly the same weight. — The top of Tuesday. Class name, time and instructor, three lines at nearly one weight, six times down the card.

Sierra Buttes backpacking trip

A weekend in the Sierra Nevada, April 7 to 9, eighty dollars including transport, meals, group gear and trip leaders. This one ran as an Instagram story, and the treatment is the closest I got to something I would still put my name on.

Detail of the story's cream panel: the trip name, then the dates and price on the left with the description centre-set beside them at a similar weight. — The dates and the price on the left, the description centre-set beside them at about the same weight.

Now

A student decides on two facts here, the date and the price. Everything else supports them and should be set like it knows that.

Boathouse student manager

A role that did not exist yet, running an open rec paddling program on Lake Merced. The kayaker is drawn rather than stock, and it is the piece of craft on this page I am still happiest with.

Now

The flyer tells you to "scan this QR or visit handshake.com and search up Student Manager of the Boathouse Job #7839307". That is a set of directions, not a link, and it is set at the same size as the paragraph above it. A short URL and the QR would have done the whole job.

Blue flyer for a Boathouse Student Manager role, with a white kayaker illustration, a sun, a QR code and instructions to apply through Handshake.

A queue, a template, and a blank artboard

Two or three events a week only works if most of the week is not new work.

Asana

Where the work came in, with the date it had to be up already attached. I could see a whole term at once, which is how I learned to start the slowest thing first instead of the loudest one.

Canva

Anything that came back every term, built as a template, so the front desk could swap the times on a schedule and print it without waiting on me.

Adobe Suite

The one-off work, drawn rather than assembled. The kayaker on the Boathouse flyer, and anything that had to leave as a print-ready file.

The templates are the part I would point at in an interview. One part-time student designer against a full term of deadlines only adds up if you stop being the bottleneck for everything that repeats.

What eight months of this actually taught me

For eight months I was a reason students knew things existed. A trip to the Sierra Buttes, a job on Lake Merced, a nine o'clock class on a Thursday. None of that reaches anybody on its own. It reached them because something I made said so, and because somebody else put it in front of them at the right moment.

I also worked the front desk as a student ambassador, so I stood next to that work while people read it. Watching somebody pick up a flyer, hunt for one fact and put it back down is still the fastest feedback I have had on anything I have made, and it is where the habit in all four of those sheets became obvious. I was designing for the person reviewing the file. Clarity is not how a thing looks; it is how little work it leaves the person reading it.

Closing thoughts

Thanks for reading. I have not made anything since without asking where it will actually be read and who is going to be walking past it. If you want to talk about any of it, or about what I would do with this work now, I'm around.