On November 7th and 8th, 2014, Worcester Polytechnic Institute inaugurated its 16th President, Laurie A. Leshin. The Design Team of WPI"s Marketing and Communications department were tasked with creating a look and feel for the event, including branding, environmental design, and a 'look' that would follow Ms. Leshin through her presidency. The five of us gathered, locked ourselves in a room, threw every idea we had out on the table, and created the look.

President Leshin has a long, storied background at NASA; she's a member of the Mars Curiosity Rover team, the deputy center director for science and technology at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and the deputy associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. We wanted to reference her love of space in our designs, and that was our true starting point. Her father, amazingly enough, is a space photographer, so we were even able to include some of his photography in the materials.

Overall concept: WPI Design Team (Melissa Arndt, AnnMarie Nichols Burtt, Britt Hafford, Sami Lipkin, and Dianne Vanacore)
Website: AnnMarie Nichols Burtt
Wordmark: Sami Lipkin
Collateral: Melissa Arndt and Britt Hafford
Photos: Matthew J Burgos, Tony Rinaldo, and Britt Hafford

Our main look featured the two historic towers of Worcester Polytechnic Institute campus (Boynton Hall and Salisbury Labs) as a nod to the past; the inauguration also happened to correlate with the start of WPI's 150th Anniversary year. The planet Mars in the upper corner references Laurie Leshin's love of the red planet. The silhouette of Worcester, Massachusetts's skyline borders the bottom. In many pieces, the silhouette, as well as some of the starts in the sky, was finished with a clear varnish that appeared and disappeared depending on the light.

Formal Invitation
Formal invitation sent to possible delegates, other university presidents, family and friends of President Leshin, and other VIPs. The invitation featured a clear varnish silhouette along the bottom of the entire invitation, inside and out. The inside featured two pockets in the shape of the Earth. The pockets held cards with variable details.

Event Promotion
In an effort to get students, staff, and faculty involved, there were many events on campus leading up to the event itself. T-shirt giveaways, trick-or-treating (involving space-themed candies; of course!) and social media events. One in particular was the countdown, posted on the WPI homepage, Inauguration site, social media, and web news journal.

Environment
Transforming the campus into an intergalactic event was a huge part of the branding project. The first two images are concepts I created for environmental design; the third is the actual event. This also included street banners around campus, pull-up banners to backdrop events, signage, staff badges, gift tags, and photo frames.