Connecting In the Real World
Print Design
Reflect Your Authentic Voice
Print & Promo Materials
Print initiatives creates meaningful interactions with your community in real time. Each piece has the ability to build awareness, inspire, and educate your customer community, and plays a part in guiding the brand. Print materials yield inexhaustible possibilities for creativity, impact, and endurance, and are the stewards of your brand in the real world.
Business Cards
Brochures
Catalogs
Menus
In-Store Promotion
Fillable PDF Forms
Event Materials
Press Kits
Bookmarks
Gift Certificates
Fundraising Event
Melinda Vaughn School Pollinator Fund
Bringing Pollinator Gardens to Schools
Design for the Arts has worked with the Melinda Vaughn Pollinator Fund since the launch of the organization with its mission to bring pollinator gardens to Minnesota schools. Our ongoing work includes identity development, website planning and design, promotional materials for events, games and activities, and a Basic Guide to Pollinator Gardening to help teachers get started.
The 2023 Wingspan fundraising event (a silent auction featuring works by local artists) helped them meet over 80% of their fundraising goal. By highlighting the option to make a donation at the website, the Pollinator Fund received additional support from those who could not attend the event, or who wanted to offer more. Postcards, images for social media posts, and posters carried cohesive design and messaging through all channels of promoting the event and featured a few eye-catching pollinators to get the word out.
Annual Report
Minnesota Education Equity Partnership
Advancing Race Equity & Excellence
Intention: Create an online interactive Annual Report for MnEEP’s 2020 year. The report highlighted their 5 Big Bold Goals to advance racial equity in policy and practice in education. A print PDF of the annual report was also designed, which can be downloaded from the online report.
Team: Good Work Group,
Design for the Arts, Abstract Pigeon
Direct Mail Feature
Adopt-a-Drain
A Program of Hamline University & Center for Global Environmental Education
Adpopt-a-Drain and Design for the Arts began working together to bring cohesion and clarity to this rapidly growing brand. Our ongoing work includes defining and maintaining brand standards and messaging, design refinement and production of new promotional materials, and strengthening work flow standards as the program partner with cities to grow a national clean water movement.
Participant Reporting Increased from 25% to 40%
Intention/Action: Increase reporting by people who signed up to participate in the program, but had never reported on what they had cleared from drains.
Challenge/Opportunity: Hundreds of people had signed up, but had not followed through on reporting. Community reporting helps cities comply with federal mandates for stormwater regulations under the Clean Water Act.
Pivot: The original headline, “We Need Your Help,” was too general and could be confused with fundraising efforts. The new messaging, “Your Reporting Is Key to Our Success,” directly appealed to participants to take the next step to report what they had cleaned up.
Join with Neighbors to Protect the Mississippi
Direct Mail to St. Paul Residents
This campaign inspired residents to sign up to adopt a storm drain and protect local waterways.
Brand Feature
Kopplin’s Coffee
Kopplin’s Coffee and Design for the Arts have worked together for over a decade in the shops mission to bring third-wave coffee to the Twin Cities. This family-owned, neighborhood coffee shop quickly became a model for other coffeehouses in the Twin Cities. Their commitment to sustainability and fostering community sets them apart.
Our work focuses on the thoughtful management of identity and frequent brand engagement sessions. Building awareness through messaging and design showcases this cafes commitment to local makers, living wage, compostable containers, advocating for involvement in local politics, and exceptionally good coffee, tea, and pastries.
Brand Feature
Twin Cities Flower Exchange
In 2017, Christine from Foxglove Market launched Twin Cities Flower Exchange, a wholesale market (hosted at the Good Acre) for local, sustainable cut flowers and flora. The first local, chemical-free wholesale market in the U.S., TCFE is paving the way for change and playing a role in a nation-wide floral revolution.
Featuring illustration by local artist Lisa Rydin Erickson, the promotional pieces we created helped get the word out that it is possible to harvest throughout the seasons (even in Minnesota) to eliminate chemicals and reduce carbon emissions that are pervasive the floral industry.
Design Feature
Storied Owl Books
Storied Owl Books is a family-owned, independent bookstore in the Highland Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. So, of course we designed promotional bookmarks! The bookmarks, in addition to the logo and store signage, became the foundational pieces for a playful and modern brand. Sometimes, it only takes a few pieces to create a brand.
