Lyndsey Januszewski was navigating a rainy walk across Portland State University’s campus when a flash of color caught her eye on the pavement outside a corner store.
"I saw a copy of Willamette Week, like, drenched and stepped on the ground. I was like, ‘Oh, my design is being stepped on in the rain.’ That was fun,” she says, laughing. “That's definitely a moment of real life. I love that."
As a junior in Portland State's graphic design program, Januszewski designed the new brand for Willamette Week, as part of a partnership between the alternative newspaper and PSU's Brand Lab course. She says it hadn’t really sunk in that her design was out in the world until she saw it in person — an experience that was perhaps more humorous than she had expected.
Brand Lab is a junior-level course in PSU’s graphic design program taught by Professor Kate Bingaman-Burt and Professor Cielle Charron. Students in the course partner with local companies and agencies to provide new branding, strategy and design. It’s a win-win, Bingaman-Burt explains — companies receive fresh and thoughtful design ideas without straining their busy teams, and students get the chance to stretch their budding talent and practice professional skills, as well as build industry connections and their portfolios.
This year, when Willamette Week's publisher, Anna Zusman, approached Bingaman-Burt about a possible collaboration, they came up with the perfect opportunity: designing new branding for the annual Best of Portland awards, a readers' poll that celebrates what locals love most about Portland.
The classroom meets the real world
Each step of the projects in the Brand Lab is designed to give students real-life experience for future design careers. Students get practice working in teams, giving presentations and pitches, interfacing with clients and working directly with the robust Portland creative community.
Throughout it all, professors are there to support students, while allowing them to direct their own work.
“We act as safety nets for students. We don’t act as art directors. We guide the process, answer questions,” says Bingaman-Burt. “It’s about helping them grow confidence, so when they graduate, they feel like they’ve done this before. It’s really important that the PSU graphic design graduates are able to articulate their ideas, and to work not just solo, but with a variety of people and personalities in order to get the job done.”
It’s a win-win – companies receive fresh and thoughtful design ideas without straining their busy teams, and students get the chance to stretch their budding talent and practice professional skills.
One way Bingaman-Burt acts as a safety net is by making sure to match her classes with clients who are willing to work with students. So when Zusman reached out to ask how Willamette Week could get more involved with PSU’s graphic design program, Bingaman-Burt jumped at the chance.
“I knew that [Zusman] would be a fantastic client because she has a background as a designer,” says Bingaman-Burt. “She knows what students are going through and would be able to offer excellent feedback — which [her team was] absolutely able to do. It was an excellent experience on both sides.”
Zusman agrees that it was a mutually beneficial collaboration. “It was really, really fun to come and see all of the tremendous amount of work that went into this brand,” she says. “You know, we're a really small and scrappy team that is producing a ton of content all the time. It's always great to get an outside perspective and get new minds and designers on a specific product or campaign. [And the students’ designs] were just far more considered than anything that we have the bandwidth to do.”
Designing the brand
After Zusman came into the class and described her project needs, the Brand Lab students split up into nine teams. They met twice a week to create their strategy and branding designs then presented them to the class. Bingaman-Burt and Charron selected three teams to pitch their ideas to Zusman and the Willamette Week team, who then chose the final brand direction.
Zusman was impressed with the process of working with the students. “I used to work in branding and advertising for a long time, so I've been in a lot of brand presentations,” she says. “These students did an amazing job of getting up in front of a room of 40 people and making the case for why their design was the right choice. It made us feel hopeful about Portland and the type of people that are learning from PSU and going out into the workforce in the next couple of years.”
Januszewski created the winning design alongside her teammate Natalie Pastores. The two students divided the tasks, giving them a chance to practice collaborating on a project, just like they will as designers in the real world.
“We wanted to approach it like how we’ve seen actual agencies do it,” Januszewski says. “Natalie did the strategy and pitching, which was great. She’s very much the presenter. [And since] we wanted to keep the style cohesive throughout it, we thought it was better to keep the same hand on the visual assets, keep it consistent.” For that reason, Januszewski took on the design element of the brand.
It’s really important that the PSU graphic design graduates are able to articulate their ideas, and to work not just solo, but with a variety of people and personalities in order to get the job done.
Januszewski created three designs, and then she and Pastores narrowed those down to a final option to pitch to Zusman: a hand-lettered style that evokes Portland’s quirky, maker-centric culture.
“We were thinking [of ideas] like, handmade, garage sale, make it yourself,” says Januszewski. “There are a lot of small businesses in Portland with funky branding. We wanted to establish that feeling.”
Zusman loved the design. “The brand feels like Portland. It kind of calls on an old design style,” she says. “But we also needed something flexible. [The design] has to be made into print ads and stickers — it has to be something that can translate to different sizes. And we have to make sure that people use it and see it. Those are all considerations that we were thinking about.”
To Zusman’s point, the final brand can be found in restaurants and shops throughout the city. It’s also displayed on the Willamette Week website, which serves as a polling site for the Best of Portland awards.
A satisfied client
Bingaman-Burt is proud of the work her students did on the Best of Portland project. “They knocked it out of the park,” she says. The partnership with Willamette Week was also a positive experience, and she plans to reach out to work with them again.
Zusman, too, is thrilled that Willamette Week not only received a fresh design and the opportunity to work with up and coming Portland designers, but that her team got a boost from working with the students. She sees the partnership between the newspaper and PSU as a natural choice.
“[Best of Portland] is all about positivity, all about making our city a better place,” says Zusman. “It’s about community engagement and rooting for each other, and so it felt very appropriate to bring in a community partner like Portland State to come in and design this specific campaign.”
Springboard into the future
Bingaman-Burt hopes that working with real companies, especially high-profile ones like Willamette Week, will not only give students networking opportunities in the industry, but also inspire them to believe in themselves and their work.
Many local agencies hire alumni from PSU’s graphic design program, and alumni often maintain their connection with the program, coming back to give classroom presentations and informational interviews with students.
These students did an amazing job of getting up in front of a room of 40 people and making the case for why their design was the right choice. It made us feel hopeful about Portland and the type of people that are learning from PSU.
“The program has a really strong alumni network,” Bingaman-Burt says. “There are lots of resources and connections for students to get jobs. There’s also a mentorship program where juniors and seniors are matched with freshman and sophomores. And many students don’t leave Portland after graduating, because it’s such a creative city.”
Januszewski says the Brand Lab course helped jump start her career planning.
“This program prepared me to feel confident in my work, and to be able to reach out to these [companies],” she says. “I’m already meeting with a lot of professionals — I had a meeting with Wieden+Kennedy, and another with Jolby.”
As for the Willamette Week collaboration, Januszewksi says it still catches her by surprise when she sees it. "It's really cool to see my work [out] there.”