Welcome Resource Guide

Lory Student Center on the Colorado State University campus is a massive, 380,000 square foot building. It has more than a dozen individual food vendors, a newly renovated, two-floored campus bookstore, and more than 40 different campus service offices within its three-story walls. Survey feedback indicates there are many resources, available in the student center, which the campus community is not aware of. The LSC Resource Guide was created as a tool to respond to this need.

View the online version here: https://lsc.colostate.edu/pdfviewer/visitors-guide/?auto_viewer=true#page=&zoom=page-fit&pagemode=

Original Concept

I originally envisioned the piece as a stylized version of our Annual Reflection document - a historic, Microsoft Word document generated every year. While these documents contain a great deal of information, the layout is cumbersome and wordy. I hoped to create a new, public facing version of this information to demonstrate impact as early as Fall 2023. Unfortunately production was delayed because of more pressing issues. By Spring of 2025, I had a more focused goal - create a welcome resource, geared towards incoming students, that promoted the many services and offices available in the LSC.

Design Development

From a design standpoint, I wanted to maximize the beautiful building photography which was taken as part of our Grand Reopening. The graphic style choices needed to follow CSU's "Find Your Energy" brand standards. These include a vibrant color palette based around the traditional green color, graphic dotted and dashed elements, and brushy or photocopied textural patterns.

To brainstorm the cover design, I looked to a paid stock asset site for inspiration. I identified a template which could meet the criteria and be customized with CSU elements. Here is the sample template I found online at https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/brochure-template-design_987851.htm?epik=dj0yJnU9RXNSYXIzV1JpMkplSkpTNWFsM3U5QzM2U2tHMVJqcnUmcD0wJm49SnRGbjRUY0xsTFJZanlCcEZyXy1HQSZ0PUFBQUFBR2hoZVV This layout left room for a hero image and the circles and lines could be tweaked to match the established style.

The original draft featured the North End drone photography on the cover. Unfortunately, at this point I had to pause, so a printout of the design was pinned to bulletin board above my desk for months as a reminder of my goal.

Rekindled Motivation

In early 2025, I had an advertising project which fit perfectly with the already-developed template. The LSC Event Planning Office contacts previous large event hosts, to renew standing reservations for the following school year, beginning in January. As a pilot marketing effort, we planned to use an email marketing platform in conjunction with other media to reach this audience. Included here is a the artwork I created for this mini-campaign - including a print magazine ad, a horizontal LCD screen, and the email header. For this application I altered the color palette to match a soft-focus photo of a table setting taken during the President's Gala in 2024.

Motivated again by the successful event advertising campaign, my interest in the brochure was rekindled. In February of 2025, I realized I would need to delegate some of the content work to my team in order to meet my goal. I developed a pagination which would dedicate space for our retainer partners while also including Cultural Resource Centers and other businesses within the LSC. Jill Jones and our marketing student began pulling together contact information from our website. Jill also wrote additional blurbs and culled previous feature stories she had written for more detailed information. Leif Blessing, one of the LSC Graphic Designers with photography skills, was asked to help take photos of additional spaces.

Editing down all of the available content was a challenge. I fluctuated between a 12 page layout, a 16 page layout, and even considered a 20 page layout. However, at this point, I received direction from Leadership that active, people-centered images were preferred to the building photography I had available. I made the decision to drop the pagination back to 16 so that I would have additional funds available to purchase high resolution images from CSU's central marketing assets, shot by CSU photography staff. To unify layouts with many small chunks of information, I created a uniform "horizon" on each page to ground different content boxes and background changes.

Because this resource guide was geared towards incoming students and their families, each office directory block included Instagram or other social media handles to further engage visitors. The content and layouts were reviewed by staff representing more than 40 different offices - making this the most collaborative print piece I've created for the LSC to date. A modest print run was finally ordered in late Spring, anticipating that changes may be necessary in the future.

Publish Everywhere!

The final layout was again adapted for additional use with a double-page advertising spread in the CSU Visitor's Guide, published by Rocky Mountain Student Media. I also repurposed the cover art into a digital ad for our LCD screens, which tend to be underutilized during summer months.

Screen Reader Version

Creating the online version of the brochure proved to be more challenging than I expected. During the 2024-2025 academic year, the University issued guidance that all online content needed to meet new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This meant posting a simple PDF document would not meet guidelines for readers who may be using assistive technology. Color accessibility had already been a consideration with CSU's color palette and font sizing. However, before posting the Resource Guide, I needed to go back through the document to add alt text to every photo, apply paragraph levels to each block of text, identify artifacts which screen readers should disregard, and establish a sequential reading order.

The University recommends a combination of scanning PDF files with built in Adobe accessibility tools, as well as a downloadable PAC checker. Unfortunately, this free accessibility resource is not available for Apples. The scans revealed that there were hidden items left on the master pages due to the multiple pagination adjustments. I had also used icons to indicate social media accounts, which also triggered flags. Ultimately I simplified and flattened photos and design elements in the layout before posting the document on our website. In hindsight, I learned some tips and tricks which I will use when building future files to make converting to accessible online files easier.

Conclusion

Now that the piece is complete it has been a great resource for the building. As a staff, we have approved text to repurpose on other pieces. Campus Information staff has remarked that families are picking up the guide during orientation sessions as I had hoped. It has been very rewarding to see the brochure finally come together after so many months of planning. If you're ever in the LSC, stop by and pick one up!