Kenyon College Summer Send-Off

At the end of every academic year, Kenyon throws a massive, all-campus party called Summer Send-Off. The college brings in several bands and inflatable rides, and sets up a picnic dinner out in the lawn in front of the stage. What got my interest, though, was the fact that every year a student designs the logo. I was determined that in 2000, that student was going to be me. And, with some hard work and some marketing savvy, it was.

Most years the design is a kind of funky, earthy sketch, like the art from a Dave Matthews Band or Phish T-shirt. Since this was the new millennium, I made a more contemporary, rave-influenced design in Illustrator. I put together a package with the logo in different sizes and a list of suggested uses and presented it to the Kenyon Social Board. We batted some ideas back and forth, and soon I found myself appointed the Designer and Web Guy for SSOY2K.

In addition to the logo design, I built and hosted the Summer Send-Off site, where the entire student body went for their info on the concert. It went live a few weeks before the event, featuring band info, a timeline and a FAQ for partygoers. Although not all the bands got back to us (the concert came and went with one lonely 'coming soon' tag intact), the site was a real success. The real thrill for me, though, was when Send-Off rolled around and my logo was not only all over the posters, but all over the T-shirts of the staff as well. One of those shirts is hanging in my closet as a souvenir.

The Send-Off logo was created with Adobe Illustrator. The site was built using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady, and Adobe GoLive.