Marketing at Mashouf Wellness Center

Role: Graphic Designer
Tools: Canva, Adobe Suite, Asana
Timeline: Oct 2022 – Jun 2023
Read: 4 min
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Two printed copies of the Campus Recreation hiring flyer lying on a grey surface.

The building, and what I made for it

Campus Recreation is the department that runs student life inside Mashouf Wellness Center, SF State's recreation building. Backpacking trips, group fitness, intramurals, open rec, hiring cycles, tabling events.

I was the Graphic Designer there from October 2022 to June 2023, and my job was the graphics that got students into those programs. Most of it ran on the department's Instagram. The rest was print for the moments students were already standing in front of us: flyers on the table at a tabling event, schedules for the lobby, a hiring sheet at the front desk. The point was never only to announce an event. It was to make the building feel like somewhere worth being. I also worked the front desk as a student ambassador, which meant I stood next to my own work while people read it.

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 the ones I made.

Four pieces, four lessons

Group fitness summer class schedule on a sky, hill, and sun background. — Each of these gets its own look below, with the two questions I would ask it now.

Purple Campus Recreation hiring flyer listing seven open positions above a QR code. — Each of these gets its own look below, with the two questions I would ask it now.

This is a look back, not a redo. I do not have the working files for most of it anymore. What I have are the finished pieces and three years of distance, so each one gets the same two questions. What worked, and what I would change now.

Sierra Buttes backpacking trip

What worked

The imagery and palette read as an outdoor invitation rather than a campus announcement.

What I'd change

The dates and the $80 sit at the same weight as the paragraph beside them. Those are the two facts a student actually decides on, and they should not have to compete with the copy that only supports them.

Campus Recreation is hiring

What worked

Three ways in. Scan the QR at the board, type the URL on a phone, or email a question to a person.

What I'd change

Cut three ways in down to one, and set the job titles to read from across a hallway. Seven roles at one weight is a list, not a hierarchy. Printing the job codes made the sheet dead the moment a code changed.

Group fitness class schedule

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 full sheet, so a white card has more contrast on Monday than it does 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. The only thing that changed is what sits behind them, and that is the difference between a sheet that reads as a colour from across the lobby and one that reads as a schedule.

What worked

Five columns in the order a week actually runs. Nobody has to learn the layout before using it.

What I'd change

Push the contrast between class name, time, and instructor. Right now they are three lines at nearly the same weight. A QR would let a schedule on a wall become one on a phone.

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

Boathouse student manager flyer

What worked

The kayaker and the palette say summer outdoor job before you read a word of it.

What I'd change

Say where to apply in three words instead of a sentence. Visit Handshake and search a job number is an instruction, not a link, and it sits at the same size as the paragraph above it.

Four pieces, and the same note on all four. Each one looks right and asks the reader to do too much. That is the thread I could not see at the time. Clarity is not how a thing looks. It is how little work it leaves the person reading it.

A queue, a template, and a blank artboard

Asana

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

Canva

The recurring work, built as templates 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, from the kayaker on the Boathouse flyer to anything that had to leave as a print-ready file.

What it gave the students, and what it gave me

For eight months I was a reason students knew things existed. A trip to the Sierra Buttes, a job at the boathouse, a nine o'clock class on a Thursday. None of that reaches anybody on its own. It reaches them because something I made said so, most of it on the department's Instagram and the rest on a table or a wall inside the building. I also worked the front desk, so I stood next to that work while people read it, which is still the fastest feedback I have ever had on anything I made.

It is also where the job stopped being graphic design. A flyer is not a picture, and a story is not a graphic. Each one is a two week campaign running against everything else competing for the same student, whether that is the rest of a feed or the twelve other things happening in the lobby. Who it is for, when it goes up, how many times somebody has to see it before the date means anything: that is marketing, and I learned it here by getting it wrong in public and standing there while it happened.

Closing thoughts

Thanks for reading. This was the job that taught me to design for the person walking past or scrolling past rather than for the person reviewing the file, and I have not made anything since without asking where it will actually be read. If you want to talk about any of it, or about what I would do with this work now, I'm around.