There were I few things I wanted to see in this logo.

• Mono-color. This would be printed in a wide variety of places, at a wide variety of sizes, and in black and white or color. Color would be changed.
• Iconographic. If color wouldn’t matter, then the text would have to be accompanied by a proper symbol.
• KU Identity. Since this is a student group, the University branding guidelines would have to be incorporated  This meant no Jayhawk (possible, but too much red tape to make it worthwhile), no KU with the swoosh, type would be Gill Sans or Palatino or Trajan, and of course, the color palette.
• University-specific. This is a local, on-campus org, after all.

I managed a piss-poor draft on Thursday night, a stronger set on Friday night, and then a 3-hour perfectionist session on Saturday afternoon. The logo was voted unanimously (notably, this session’s first unanimous vote) that night. Used Illustrator CS5.5.

Below is a reproduction of the submitted portfolio, sans rec letters from the UDK advisor, Jon Schlitt and ad manager Ross Newton.

The backend for each edition allows for a custom header color, brief summary text, intro, and colophon, in addition to a splash and anchor image. Plus, two spots for advertisers in the top left and three full page ads. The idea was as simple as possible.

This is a revamp of last year’s digital edition, which was managed through WordPress on a separate site, populated by a JSON query, and then exported to a static HTML file. Needless to say, this was not efficient or easy to duplicate for future editions. Target devices are mobile and tablet, as navigation between edition items requires touch/swipe, although the same effect can be achieved on desktop with click-and-drag.

Unfortunately, the Kansan did not make any use of this, so I intend to open source this as a plugin this summer in hopes that someone else will.

A custom build of ZURB’s Foundation, primarily the grid and visibility classes, is built into the custom WordPress theme. Flexslider, modernizr, and a handful of icons from iconmonstr and the Noun Project were also used on the site. For more about more of the libraries utilized, read the humans.txt.

I was responsible for the filter options (amenities, price, nearby, etc.) as well as the required information for owners and residence listings – or, essentially, everything but the literal content and design. The site features a filtering/sorting feature, a “save for later” print-friendly format, and nearby places of interest on each listing page. On the backend, it runs WordPress using a handful of custom post types and dozens of custom meta fields, makes serious use of Isotope and a bit of bxSlider, and was created with SCSS and Coffeescript.

UDK creative manager [for the ad staff] Lauren Bowles was the designer.