Donor Beatrice Header

How Bub­bles, Gum­balls, and Grass Brought a Donor Dis­play to Life

Beat­rice Pub­lic Schools, locat­ed in Beat­rice, Nebras­ka, was look­ing for a donor recog­ni­tion dis­play that would ade­quate­ly hon­or the indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and orga­ni­za­tions that sup­port the school district’s mis­sion to be among the best in the nation.

Cre­at­ing a visu­al­ly dynam­ic donor wall at an ele­men­tary school to hon­or donors.

Beat­rice Pub­lic Schools, locat­ed in Beat­rice, Nebras­ka, was look­ing for a donor recog­ni­tion dis­play that would ade­quate­ly hon­or the indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and orga­ni­za­tions that sup­port the school district’s mis­sion to be among the best in the nation. Through our Design-Build process we col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate a unique, visu­al­ly dynam­ic donor recog­ni­tion dis­play that draws adults’ atten­tion and gives kids some­thing fun and col­or­ful to look at through­out their school day.

Donor Wall Assign­ment: It’s Elementary

Beatrice Elementary Color Palette Labeled

Beat­rice Pub­lic Schools trust­ed us to have free reign with design and pro­vid­ed ele­va­tions for the instal­la­tion loca­tion in the ele­men­tary school along with their col­or board and fin­ish sched­ule to help us under­stand the design intent. They want­ed to incor­po­rate the campaign’s key words, which dou­ble as the dif­fer­ent lev­els of giv­ing with­in the cam­paign: INNO­VA­TION, INSPI­RA­TION, ADVANCE­MENT, and ENCOURAGEMENT. 

Our Expe­ri­en­tial Graph­ic Design­er, Andrej, was inspired by the col­ors in a car­pet sam­ple, which had a base of gray with bold pri­ma­ry col­ors mixed in. Play­ing off those col­ors helped us come up with a kid-cen­tric design that would fill well in the space.

The first con­cept was based on the idea of a fac­to­ry or machine and involved gears work­ing togeth­er. The var­i­ous gears cre­at­ed the idea of motion, adding visu­al inter­est beyond just col­ors. While the Beat­rice team liked the gen­er­al con­cept, they want­ed to see some­thing sim­pli­fied, maybe using just cir­cles rather than gears. That piece of feed­back got us mov­ing in the right direction.

Con­cep­tu­al Design Lands On Bub­ble Theme

As we played with dif­fer­ent cir­cle con­cepts, we want­ed to keep kids in mind. What would draw chil­dren in and help bright­en their day? Even­tu­al­ly, the idea of soap bub­bles came to life. What kid doesn’t like bubbles?

Once we set­tled on bub­bles, we added a sil­hou­ette of a child blow­ing bub­bles to the right of the main recog­ni­tion sig­nage. While the Beat­rice team loved the bub­bles, they want­ed to go with a more abstract dis­play. To make sure the bub­bles real­ly came to life, we added some sub­tle reflec­tions that would also help make the cir­cles pop off the wall. The key words Beat­rice gave us of INNO­VA­TION, INSPI­RA­TION, ADVANCE­MENT, and ENCOUR­AGE­MENT were woven through­out the bub­ble design, help­ing to lead the eye through the display.

Cre­at­ing Visu­al Inter­est in Donor Design

Beatrice Donor Bubble Details

The Beat­rice team came up with the bril­liant idea of using tex­tures in the dis­play wall – things peo­ple might be tempt­ed to reach out and touch. While they didn’t want to use actu­al tex­tures, which would dis­tract from the main pur­pose of the wall, they asked us to cre­ate the illu­sion of textures.

The team brain­stormed on kid-cen­tric tex­tures that could work with the bub­ble theme. What cir­cu­lar things do kids like? Gum­balls, rub­ber band balls, and ball pits came to mind. We also want­ed to incor­po­rate a few organ­ic tex­tures that could be found in nature, and we thought of kids’ bare feet in the grass or sand. 

Nar­row­ing down the tex­ture illu­sions helped final col­ors come into focus. We cre­at­ed col­or casts, or fil­ters, of each tex­ture by decon­struct­ing and manip­u­lat­ing exist­ing pho­tog­ra­phy and imagery. 

The bub­bles were designed to be vary­ing sizes and thick­ness­es to give dimen­sion and add visu­al inter­est to the wall. They end­ed up being 18”, 14”, and 10” in diam­e­ter. Design ele­ments like drop shad­ows and side views in con­cept and pro­duc­tion draw­ings helped our team and the client bet­ter under­stand how the 2D draw­ing would look in the 3D world. 

Beatrice Donor Wall 2

Donor Name Flux

Names can be the trick­i­est part of a donor wall. Our team had to find a font that fit with all lengths of names in all sizes of cir­cles. The client want­ed to make sure the names real­ly popped out from the bub­bles, because after all, the donor names are the entire point of a donor recog­ni­tion wall. A sim­ple sans serif font that felt kid-friend­ly and was clean and read­able was the way to go. 

Dur­ing the design process, names can change, or a donor might move from a low­er-tier dona­tion to a high­er tier. Our designs are in con­stant flux until we are ready to man­u­fac­ture the phys­i­cal dis­play. With this par­tic­u­lar design, we worked from the cen­ter of the dis­play out­ward and left room for the dis­play wall to grow. Our clients often want to add donors to their dis­plays as time goes on, and these mal­leable, or dynam­ic, donor walls can grow while main­tain­ing con­cep­tu­al integrity.

Donor Recog­ni­tion Dis­play Expertise

Have ques­tions about this project? Reach out to us at connect@​latitudesignage.​com.

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Learn more about donor recog­ni­tion sig­nage here.

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