Giving Backcb{d} Judges Student Posters for New Park in Wichita

The Wichita Downtown Development Corporation was looking for creative volunteers to do a WSU Graphic Design Student work critique a few weeks ago. Sarah and Cassandra jumped at the opportunity. The design student’s project was to design a series of posters to market the new Pop-Up Urban Park that will replace the large hole in the ground at Douglas and Market.

Here is a little background on the project….

A building was torn down just off the corner of Douglas and Market and then the project to rebuild fell through. Unfortunately the result was a crater sized hole on our busy Douglas Ave. Luckily, there was a grant awarded by the Knight Foundation Fund of the Wichita Community Foundation to the WDDC. Since then, local developers, architects and local colleges stepped in to help organize a Pop-Up Urban Park to engage the community downtown providing a place for activities, food trucks and live music

You can read the Official Press Release about the grant by clicking here.

There are a ton of great photos of the area and planning meetings on the WDDC’s website by clicking here.

KSU Architect students were involved earlier in the process for the site design and then WSU Graphic Design students were brought in for the marketing part of the project. cb{d}, Lifeboat Creative, WDDC, and WCF professionals helped with the judging of the posters to market the new park.

The first prize winner of the poster designs was awarded $100 (we later learned she used this to attend an AIGA event, wahoo!) and her posters are actually being used for the marketing.

The design requirements for the posters were that each design had to represent the style of a different design style decade. This was the challenging part for the students to create a cohesive campaign from 5 different decades of design. The results were fun, funky and creative! Many of the students pulled the designs together with colors.

Judging the posters was difficult due to all the unique designs and hard work that the WSU students dedicated to this project. Some of the designs were interactive, which we loved, but in the end the message needed to clearly represent what was happening at the new Pop-Up Urban Park.

We received a super sweet thank you card from the WDDC and WSU. Thank you for including cb{d} in the downtown development projects. We are proud to call Wichita home!