Students Follow Their Instincts to Create Top Design Solutions

After endless hours of intense work, graphic design student teams presented their final design solutions this week to their clients and faculty. The results: happy clients, and jaw-dropping portfolios.

Juggling more than 10 clients in a span of three months, the teams made up of juniors and seniors worked on everything from rebranding a community acupuncture clinic, to helping a group of doctors brand their plant-based medicine, to updating the image of local jewelry and pottery makers, and even creating designs for two internal JWU projects. And once again, their killer instincts delivered.

“You did a lot of good [work] for a lot of people, you made things look good,” says Deana Marzocchi, associate professor and department chair. “Take a step back, you should be applauding yourselves.”

Speaking to the Design Solutions II class, Marzocchi noted that each student team worked on four projects simultaneously. She praised the students for their hard work and also thanked the clients for their commitment.

"Take a step back, you should be applauding yourselves.

“This class means so much to our students. They learn so much more than just design,” says Marzocchi. “They learn [to deal with] all the unexpected things that can happen when you work with clients, when the printer is not working correctly, when you work on a team and make new friends ... It’s about all that, and hopefully [about] having experiences that will go with them throughout their life.”

During their presentations, students outlined the design process from their first meeting with clients to understand their goals, to sketching and experimenting with different ideas for the various designs, and finally to the deliverables for each project. They had a lot to share. Below are some thoughts about their experiences and a selection of their work. 

“We give a huge thank you to the Docs. Without you guys we wouldn't have had this like real-life experience, and we're really grateful to have been given the opportunity to work with you. It's been a long journey. But we're really happy with the outcome of our work. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to meet with us.”

– Antonia Karageorge ’20, at the end of her Plant Docs presentation with team members Christina Pinheiro and Katie Vidal

“We really wanted to show [through our design] how inviting acupuncture is because we know how there’s a big stereotype about acupuncture hurting and the needles … and all that sort of stuff. So, we really wanted to show that it's a very friendly, welcoming, warm environment and it's not really something that should be feared, but something that people are willing to try and explore.

– Shawn Updike ’20, describes what he and teammates Tim Nugent, Nate Spinetti and Erin Young focused on while designing for Providence Community Acupuncture.

“Thank you to Chef Miscovich, and particularly to Chef Haas, who like I said was our main contact, but also to Chef Brown and Chef Lavornia for really giving us all of the feedback this whole time. It’s been really helpful in giving us a guide. It's been [the process] a lot of iterations and a lot of back and forth, but I feel like that's been a really good for us. It’s really let us understand what everybody wanted and what the program really wanted to put out into the world for getting students to be in the program.”

–LeeAnn Florez ’20 describes the process her and team members Julia Johnson, Laura Messenger and Tommy Milazzo went through to design a promotional flyer for JWU’s Baking & Pastry Arts bachelor’s degree through our International Baking & Pastry Institute.