American Graphic Design Award — Day of Design 2025 visual identity, Graphic Design USA, 2025
Runner-Up, CQ82 — Day of Design 2025 poster design, Creative Quarterly, 2025
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Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction celebrated the 5th Day of Design—focused on fabrication—in September 2025.
This year’s identity explored fabrication in all its forms across the college’s six disciplines: architecture, environmental design, graphic design, industrial design interior architecture and landscape architecture. While some fields in CADC fabricate physically, others practice forms of making rooted in assembly, craft, iteration and translation. The visual system sought to honor both the tangible and the intangible—where shaping material meets shaping ideas.
Below is a sample of deliverables completed in the 2025 event’s identity.
The poster comprised three layers of translucent vellum, inviting viewers to physically experience the act of building.
The bottom layer featured the word FABRICATION cut in white vinyl and hand-transferred in a precise composition, grounding the piece in material craft. The middle layer introduced a network of “webbing”—an abstract representation of cognitive and creative connection: the leap from idea to artifact, one concept sparking the next, the energetic circuitry of discovery and design. The top layer carried the event’s information, printed over a subtle grid referencing systems used across design disciplines.
A clean sans serif typeface—with rounded interior moments inspired by CNC routing paths—created a quiet nod to digital-to-physical fabrication methods. Together, the layers revealed fabrication not just as a process of construction, but as a way of thinking, connecting and making meaning.
Wherever possible, the poster was installed on windows, allowing natural light to pass through the vellum and interact with the layers of the design—creating a backlit effect by day and shifting in character at sunrise, sunset and after dark.
The invitation existed solely in a digital format, and the tactile qualities of vellum had to be re-created rather than relied on physically. Folded vellum was scanned and incorporated into the layout, then paired with low-opacity shapes to simulate overlapping layers of material. This approach established the visual language for subsequent digital deliverables and bridged the physical and digital expressions of the system.
As fully digital pieces, the social media assets extended the material language established by the invitation, incorporating scanned vellum to preserve the layered effect. Three coordinated sets of graphics were developed to pin as a banner on the college’s Instagram feed, with vellum backgrounds designed to connect seamlessly across all three posts as a single composition.
Monitor slides, on display for students the month leading up to the event, carried the same scanned-vellum approach as the invitation and social media graphics.
Following the poster, the program became the next major opportunity to experiment physically. While most other assets lived digitally or required only a print-ready file, the program offered another hands-on space to explore materiality and layering in a fresh way.
A saddle-stitched booklet with a vellum cover echoed the poster’s transparency, layering and reveal. Inside, the grid served as both organizational device and subtle texture. Vinyl elements were applied to the cover by hand—bringing the tactile language of fabrication directly into attendees’ hands—and finished with bright blue staples, a subtle, intentional accent that rewarded close attention.
T-shirts, given away to all attendees, incurred production constraints preventing the use of scanned vellum, so the design translated the concept through typography instead: FABRICATION was broken into syllables—mirroring the poster but in a new composition—and treated with a radial blur to echo the layering distortion of vellum, while the grid system introduced subtle texture.
Two sticker variations extended the system—one featuring scanned vellum and the event title, and another using the grid system for a playful, pun-centered option highlighting the event’s theme.
Signage combined scanned vellum and the dot grid strategically: up-close, larger-scale pieces emphasized materiality with vellum, while smaller or distance-view items leaned on the grid for clarity and impact.
The presentation took full advantage of the venue’s massive screens, using bold, oversized text to create impact while maintaining a simple, clear design. Vellum was incorporated subtly, with layered textures that remained understated to account for viewing distance. Slides ran before the event, highlighting the schedule and featured speakers.