Drexel Alumni Turkey Project Multi-Year Event Branding

Creating an evergreen rebrand for a staple Drexel Alumni tradition

The Turkey Project at Drexel University is an annual fundraiser to provide holiday meals for local families in need. As a well-established tradition, our data showed that fundraising goals are met with minimal maintenance communications. However, the team spent resources concepting each piece individually. The goal for this system was to create an evergreen event brand that could be easily adapted year after year with minimal effort while maintaining a sense of tradition.

I led the team (graphic design, editorial, digital, and operations) to ideate multiple concepts and we presented two to our partners. I created the key art for the chosen concept (shown), and art-directed the rest of the applications over the years, including digital graphics, print, and video. Working with our partners, editorial, and digital, we adapted the messaging and tweaked the design to make sure our communications remained relevant over time.

  • Role: Creative director, designer
  • Client: Drexel University Alumni Relations
  • Employer: Drexel University Institutional Advancement
  • Engagement: Concept ideation, event branding, key art, creative direction for email, social, web graphics, print collateral, event graphics, and video
  • Impact:
    • All fundraising goals were exceeded year after year
    • The team had additional bandwidth to allocate to other initiatives, increasing impact without increasing resources
    • Designers were able to pick up applications easily as they became available, further increasing efficiency
    • The 50th-anniversary branding was built on top of the previous evergreen brand, showing its flexibility and longevity
Social media graphics (2021)
Instagram page showing post for Turkey Project
Instagram page showing post for Turkey Project
Instagram page showing post showcasing results for Turkey Prokect
Videos promoting fundraising and volunteer opportunities. The videos were reformatted for email and social, and we produced teasers for social (2019).
Animation and stills from Turkey Project Video
Animation and still from Turkey Project Video

Email header (2022)
 
 
Drexel Details: All you need to know about the Alumni Turkey Project
 

Drexel Alumni <alumni@drexel.edu>

October 14, 2022, 11:12 AM

DREXEL
DETAILS
The Alumni e-Newsletter

Details masthead
October 14, 2022
The Alumni Turkey Project Returns to Make a Difference

This holiday season, you can help put food on the table for those in need throughout the Greater Philadelphia area by supporting the 49th Alumni Turkey Project. Last year, Drexel’s longest-running alumni tradition provided a record-breaking number of holiday meals. As the need for support remains, you can get involved by:

  • making a holiday meal possible for an individual or a family in need with your donation
  • volunteering to hand out turkeys to community partners at Distribution Day
  • packing holiday sides at Sharing Excess, a non-profit founded by Evan Ehlers ’19
  • attending the virtual discussion, Mutual Aid: Empowering Communities in Times of Crisis


Drexel University
Office of Alumni Relations
Paul Peck Alumni Center
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
alumni@drexel.edu

Drexel Alumni logo

IS THIS YOU? Bernardo Margulis hello@bernardo.onl
1234 Gr*****
Phi*****
(***)***-0223

Partner digital toolkitl (2020)
Branded email banner
Branded email header
Branded email banner
Print applications: Solicitation mailer (2021), signage (2019) and custom bags (2022)
Brand refresh for 50th anniversary, built on top of previous evergreen branding; the refresh was executed by the Marketing and Communications team after my tenure
Stacked boxes with a Turkey Project sign with the label Canned Goods Pickup Volunteer lining up Turkey Project branded bags
A child pulling a frozen turkey out of a box; there is a Turkey Project sign with the label Turkey Pickyp behind the box

Process

We began the process with research and conversations with our partners to understand the project and its needs. It quickly became apparent that the Turkey Project was well established and required mostly maintenance messaging. As one partner suggested, "We don't have to do anything and people will still give". With this, we decided that the best plan of action was to produce an evergreen system.

Artifacts from brainstorming session; constituent map, big idea vignette, and list of applications to consider
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map
Design Thinking artifact for big idea
Design Thinking artifact for big idea

I facilitated a brainstorming session with the team, where we identified the top three themes we wanted to explore. We developed these themes through graphics and copy and iterated a few rounds internally.

We presented the two concepts to our partners, and with their feedback we polished the final concept.

Slides from the presentation to our partners
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map
Design Thinking artifact for constituent map

Since we had an established brand, it was easy to allocate the production work, as the partner presentation doubled as a style guide. Over the years we used feedback from our partners and our own learnings to evolve the visuals, and the copy was adapted each year to meet the needs.

Work Samples