CSU Homecoming and Family Weekend 2025

Every year Colorado State University invites alumni and friends back to campus for Homecoming and Family Weekend. Our team of two designers creates the overall campaign and toolkit for campus and community partners to leverage as they host a weekend full of activities.

For 2025, Kate Wyman and I had three goals for Homecoming: develop and look and feel that married the Alumni Association to CSU and to CSU Athletics, develop a badge that was immediately identifiable and could last several years, and create a toolkit that allowed any campus or community partner to hop aboard the the look and feel without needing to be a graphic designer.

Kate and I first brainstormed the year’s badge with a quantity approach - sketching out dozens of variations before narrowing them down to six choices we brought to stakeholders for a decision. The six choices had placeholder illustrations or typography, to save us time working on discarded directions. Kate refined their selection into a new badge, with cleaned up typography and an iconographic interpretation of Canvas Stadium at the top.

For branding, I was inspired by the work done for New York Giants 100th season by Contino. Kate and I explored the past and present of CSU together by collaging stripes of archival photography together with modern. We wanted to show how history is ever changing in terms of trees growing or fashion changing, but collegiate traditions like CAM the Ram or the A are eternal.

Kate and I spent time creating several generic collages, which were able to be plugged into any layout. We ended up creating even more for specific events during the weekend as needed, such as a Homecoming 5K specific collage. While Kate had a blast with traditional work, I felt more comfortable creating digitally, working in Photoshop. It’s fun to see either approach works beautifully, and we were able to use both together!

Below is a gallery of some of the collages we created:

More of the brand’s elements take historic inspiration - with rough, noisy textures and handwritten CSU words or phrases akin to notes on the back of photographs. Part of the brand includes elements from Colorado State University’s current brand, Find Your Energy, for the ultimate bridge of past and present. This includes the brushstroke pattern, color bar accent, and the fonts used.

The Alumni Association hosts a plethora of events for our eight CSU colleges, and I worked with their teams to brand each event. If I was not able to create deliverables for the event, I handed off a toolkit that included a one-page Visual Brand Language document, general flat graphics for social media, email, or digital screens, and templates in Canva for the college’s team members to built out graphics to their specific event’s needs.

Distinguished Alumni Awards

Within the CSU Alumni Association, I created suites for 4 major events happening over the 4-day long weekend. The first is an award ceremony celebrating alumni who have distinguished themselves professionally, brought honor to the University, and have made significant contributions of time and/or philanthropy to the University and their community. With this event, I utilized iconic photography of CSU with the A, and the award’s ram horn shape. I prominently featured our classic university colors, green and gold, for this die-hard rams grad audience.

Photography courtesy of CSU Photography

Photos from the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards event:

50 Year Club

Another event is a luncheon and award ceremony celebrating graduates from 50 or more years ago. With this event, I utilized cheer squad photos from our archives and prominently featured our classic university colors, green and gold, for this die-hard rams grad audience.

A note on the stage backdrop - the Alumni team reuses fabric backgrounds I designed for tailgate photo booths. So, while unrelated to the Homecoming brand, I do love those backdrops. Reduce Reuse Recycle!

One deliverable I have a joy creating is a photo booth background collage that takes all the yearbook photos from the graduating class’ year. Guests enjoy finding themselves and lamenting on the days when they had all that hair!

Photography courtesy of CSU Photography

Photos from the 2025 50 Year Club event:

Below are a few other collateral pieces to help show the versatility of the look and feel I created, including general promotional material or smaller events the CSU Alumni Association provided marketing support for. This is just a small sample of the 100+ deliverables I created for the entire 4-day Homecoming and Family Weekend:

General HCFW poster as part of the toolkit. Printed on-demand for campus and community promotion

General HCFW 1920x1080 digital screen as part of the toolkit. Used on TVs across campus

Hotel print piece as part of the toolkit. Distributed to partner hotels in the community during the weekend

Billboard graphic at Prospect Road and I-25