AS BOD Elections Branding

November 2025–May 2026

Scope of Work: Brand Design, Concept Ideation, Typograpy System, Image Treatment, Layout & Composition Rules, Design Rational, Application Mock ups

Focused on driving civic engagement at SFSU, this project details the creation of the Spring 2026 Associated Students Board of Directors Elections brand identity. Working alongside the Assistant Executive Director of Governance and under the supervision of the Creative Director / Assistant Executive Director of Marketing & Communications, the scope captures the design journey from initial concept discovery to a fully realized production system.

Through its targeted marketing application across digital and print touchpoints—including a digital social campaign of 16 posts that generated 23.1k views, 1.8k likes, and 20 comments. The finalized brand identity successfully elevated student participation, driving overall voter turnout up to 15%.

DISCOVERY

The Challenge
Navigating the campaign project required balancing strategic cultural messaging, a tight project timeline, and the imperative for real-world impact. The central design challenge lays in honoring SFSU’s rich history of student activism and grassroots defiance while maintaining the clarity, structure, and modern authority required of student governance. Executing this vision demanded moving swiftly from broad initial exploration to final refinement before winter recess, locking down key structural decisions including the custom color palette, typographic pairing, halftone imagery treatments, and a distinct tone of voice.
Ultimately, the visual system was intended to cut through campus noise, authentically amplifying student voices, igniting civic energy, and driving voter participation across both high-traffic campus print media and dynamic digital touchpoints.

Research
Building on these movement aesthetics, the identity draws directly from SFSU’s historic legacy of student activism.
In light of current systemic challenges across the CSU system, including the budget cuts, class reductions, and rising student-to-faculty ratios. The 2026 election theme centers on reclaiming and amplifying the student voice. The design system serves as a call to action that transform civic participation into an act of direct student advocacy.

1968 Strike: SFSU established that civic duty on this campus is born from student resistance, leading the nation’s longest strike to establish Ethnic Studies.

Present Strikes: CFA strikes and campus Encampments for Palestine anchor this campaign in live history, proving that collective protest remains our primary vehicle for student advocacy and global solidarity.

1968 Strike: SFSU established that civic duty on this campus is born from student resistance, leading the nation’s longest strike to establish Ethnic Studies.

Present Strikes: CFA strikes and campus Encampments for Palestine anchor this campaign in live history, proving that collective protest remains our primary vehicle for student advocacy and global solidarity.

1968 Strike: SFSU established that civic duty on this campus is born from student resistance, leading the nation’s longest strike to establish Ethnic Studies.

Present Strikes: CFA strikes and campus Encampments for Palestine anchor this campaign in live history, proving that collective protest remains our primary vehicle for student advocacy and global solidarity.

Creative Inspiration
Inspired by contemporary political and grassroots movements, we analyzed identity that puts people and community at the center of their visual narrative.

Zohran Mamdani, Saikat Chakrabarti
High-contrast color blocking and layout structures that make political messaging highly digestible.

Kamala Harris, Shirley Chisholm
Modern, accessible branding anchored by typographic hierarchies and community-based imagery.

Black Panther Party, Dream Defenders
Emotional, unfiltered, and uncompromising layouts that emphasizes urgency collective power.

DESIGN

Image Treatment

The Halftone Treatment
All continuous-tone photography undergoes a halftone treatment (high-contrast dots). Historically used in cheap, mass-produced political zines, pamphlets and screen-printed posters.

Civic Meets Defiance
We paired symbols of traditional governance (gavel, scales, ballots) with raw, real-world imagery of youth advocacy and student protestors.

Typography
Our typography needs to speak with authority, history, and the raw student energy. We explored two distinct directions to contrast with clean, reliable sans-serifs.

Option A: The Raw & Historic Voice

Display Font: Thunderhouse Pro (wood-type with a jagged, "grunge" aesthetic)
Body Font: Univers (A classic, highly legible neo-grotesque)

The Vibe: Energetic, textured, and grassroot-feeling. While not tied to a single political movement, its wood-type origins recall early print shops, wheat-pasted flyers, and underground publishing.

Option B: Modern & Structural Voice

Display Font: YWFT Filmhaus (A striking, geometric, and structured display face)
Body Font: Sofia Pro (friendly, geometric sans-serif)

The Vibe: Clean, authoritative, and distinctly contemporary.
It channels the look of modern civic platforms while remaining incredibly legible across digital and print applications.

Final Typography Application
Our typographic strategy pairs the structural authority of YWFT Filmhaus with the humanizing clarity of Sofia Pro to build a hierarchy that is both commanding, and legible.

Display Specimen (YWFT Filmhaus Bold, Italic):

Designed to lock in focus and convey collective strength.
Body Specimen (Sofia Pro & YWFT Filmhaus Regular):

Ensures all election directives, voting links, and platform information remain effortless to read on both print flyers and mobile screens.

Color Palette
Combination of rich, grounded tones with high-visibility accents to reject flat aesthetics, and demand immediate attention across campus.

Color System

We utilized a set of tints and shades of our primary campaign colors
to create rich, dynamic gradients to avoids flat aesthetics, adding movement, youthfulne ss, and energy to digital banners and physical flyers alike.

Color Application
When applied in practice, the primary palette transitions from
flat color swatches into dynamic gradients and textured layers.

APPLICATION

Projection 4K Design Courtesy of Lauren Hohls

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