Graphic design partners with Penn State Votes in Evanisko Project collaboration

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — First-year graphic design students in GD107: Graphic Design Studio in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School are applying classroom principles to real-world civic issues this semester through a collaborative project with Penn State Votes, supported by the Evanisko Project and Penn State University Libraries.

With Penn State Votes as the students’ subject, the project tasked them with researching how members of the Penn State community access voting information and then creating digital advertisements designed to better connect students with nonpartisan election resources.

The collaboration brings together an academic institution, civic engagement and public exhibition while giving students direct experience working with a campus client.

Penn State Votes serves as the University’s trusted nonpartisan voter education resource, helping eligible voters navigate registration, absentee and mail ballots, polling locations and state-specific election rules. The program also provides educational resources for faculty, staff and students seeking to better understand the voting process.

Kendall Mainzer, a Student Affairs staff member and a doctoral candidate in educational psychology, said Penn State Votes’ role in the project was to help students understand the communication barriers the organization faces for students to create effective advertisements.

“We provided nonpartisan information for the graphic design students about the challenges we face sharing information about voting, building trust and supporting the Penn State community,” Mainzer said.

Those challenges are especially relevant on a college campus where students from all over the country may be eligible to vote in different places, each with their own deadlines, identification rules and ballot procedures.

Mainzer said establishing trust can also be difficult when outside organizations offer voter registration assistance or collect student information. Penn State Votes works to provide accurate guidance directly connected to the University.

The project is also the latest expansion of the Evanisko Project, a long-running partnership between Penn State’s Department of Graphic Design and the University Libraries, which was created to showcase student creativity while solving real campus challenges, increasing visibility of the libraries.

Joel Priddy, head of the Department of Graphic Design and one of the faculty members involved in developing the Evanisko Project, said the initiative began in 2021 when donors Mike and Cynni Evanisko approached the Libraries about gifting a single artwork. Priddy and Professor of Graphic Design Phil Choo suggested a broader concept that would continually feature student design work, calling it a “process.”

That process sends students into real environments to observe how people interact with spaces, information and services before designing solutions that improve those experiences.

“Externally, the Evanisko Project is an ongoing display of the creative work of Penn State students in library spaces,” Priddy said. “Internally, it is an experiment in scaffolding a single project throughout a student’s entire bachelor’s degree education.”

This year marks an expansion of that model through outside partnerships, with Penn State Votes serving as the first major collaborator with the Evanisko Project. Rather than focusing solely on library spaces, students explored information about voting and what obstacles they encountered.

Brooke Hull, assistant professor and the instructor of GD107, said the assignment is part of the course’s second major project, which introduces students to human-centered design.

Students first met with Mainzer, the Penn State Votes representative, to learn about the organization’s goals and audience needs. They then selected a narrow Penn State demographic — different from their own — based on Penn State Votes’ needs and conducted research through interviews, physical visits and user persona development.

Using human-centered design, an iterative design process that focuses on creating solutions that are rooted in the behaviors and needs of the audience, students compiled their findings and used that research to create digital advertisements tailored to their selected audiences. Hull said that the partnership gives students an opportunity to apply design methods in an authentic setting.

“The project gets students thinking about their designs in the real world,” Hull said. “Grounding their work into something real like Penn State Votes places their audience and design work into a real-world scenario.”

For students, the collaboration offers professional experience beyond a classroom project. In addition to creating design work for public display, they are learning how to conduct audience research, respond to client needs and communicate information visually with purpose.

Hope Seman, a student in GD107, said this project challenged students to combine aesthetics with information according to their research to create successful advertisements.

“My target audience was out-of-state males, and I learned through my interviews that men like to create lots of friendships and bonds,” Seman said. “I decided to use warm colors to make the advertisement feel welcoming and trustworthy.”

The assignment also demonstrates how graphic design can play a practical role in public life. Effective design can simplify complicated information, guide users through unfamiliar systems and make important resources easier to access.

“The purpose of graphic design is to help people navigate the world, gaining effective and engaging access to the information, environments and experiences they need,” Priddy said.

Graphic design can be particularly important in elections, where unclear instructions or misinformation can discourage participation, according to Priddy. By translating complex voting processes into accessible visuals, students are helping Penn State Votes strengthen its outreach efforts.

All students’ advertisements are currently running on the three-panel screen in the Collaboration Commons on the ground floor of West Pattee Library until the end of the spring semester. In the fall, Hull will be selecting a curated number of the projects, along with student reports, to be shown on the eight-panel screens in the same location during voting season.