As SAE (School of Audio Engineering) Institute expanded from five to seven U.S. campuses, the marketing department quickly outgrew their freelance graphic designers and decided to bring creative services in-house. Though the school has campuses throughout Australia, Europe, and Southeast Asia, the brand identity felt outdated for the U.S. market and in need of a facelift.

Viewbook

As marketing’s first full-time graphic design hire, I was given the opportunity to design SAE’s first comprehensive viewbook that highlighted their seven U.S. campuses and the programs offered. I project managed the 50-page book, gathering content and providing creative direction to an outside agency. Using existing typefaces and color palette, we relied on photographs to tell the story, punctuated by quick facts about each campus and quotes from students.

Event Invitation

To help celebrate the opening of SAE Institute’s Chicago and New York campuses, I saw an opportunity to create an unconventional invitation that would bring to mind the history of audio recording. With this concept in mind, I designed, sourced, and produced invitations that were printed on re-used (and fully functional!) 7" vinyl records.

Career Services Brochure

To help students with the transition from school to career, I designed the Career Services brochure, sourcing photos the creative team took ourselves, and borrowing many of the motifs and styles from the viewbook. All aspects of this book were designed in-house from start to finish.

Emails

To sell the audio production programs at SAE, I designed emails using vector graphics, key copy points, and singular calls to action with mobile responsiveness in mind. My role was laying out the design, writing copy, creating vector illustrations and gifs, and providing the overall content for the programmer.

Social Media

By monitoring analytics, we found that images of gear and audio equipment yielded high social media engagement among our students and target demographic. To keep in line with our colorful branding, SAE’s social media feed was a mix of informational posts about upcoming events, motivational quotes, and gear.

I designed social media posts by sourcing images from SAE’s photo repository and the web, as well as drawing illustrations in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Outdoor Display & Transit Ads

You may not have thought about it, but there is an artist at both ends of the microphone. Partnering with a branding consultant, my team’s objective was to create imagery that would tell the story of the need for talent, and therefore careers, behind the scenes in the music industry. Working closely with our photographer, I art directed the ads using recording equipment we had in-house to create ads for outdoor display media and transit. I then built the ads in InDesign.

The ads ran on New York City subways, Chicago CTA, Atlanta MARTA, Los Angeles bus kings, and billboards in major cities and were met with increased lead flow and applications in those markets.

Digital Display Ads

As a continuation of the transit ad campaign, I designed digital Google display ads bearing the same message and imagery.

Music Business Program Brochure

When SAE Institute Chicago launched their Music Business Program, I took the opportunity to create a new marketing piece that was edgier than SAE’s other assets. Headed by the former drummer of the Nine Inch Nails, the music business program explored entrepreneurism in the entertainment industry with a punk rock edge. Students are taught everything from fundraising by DIY’ing and selling screenprinted t-shirts, to marketing and copyright laws.

This informational brochure doubles as a concert poster on one side, with information about the program on the other. This was created 100% in house, with layout, design, and illustration done by me.

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