Context
Admissions Folder
Development Folder
Afterword
Admissions & Development Folders
Two audiences, one brand.
TeamCommunications & Marketing Office
Me, with Elizabeth Shannon (supervisor) on final say and photo selection
McLean needed two pocket folders that do very different jobs. One is handed to prospective families, meaning visiting and incoming parents who don't know the school yet. The other holds materials for TRUE BLUE, the school's annual fund, and goes to current parents and the wider community.
Same brand, same fold, opposite audiences. I designed both within McLean's existing identity. The logo, palette, and "Transformative." tagline are the school's; the folder designs, photo treatment, and layouts are mine.
For families who don't know McLean yet, the cover had to introduce it. I built a four-strip cover, each strip in one of the school's colors: blue, orange, teal, and gold. The colors are bold, inviting, and a little earthy, and to me they embody McLean's spirit.
Each strip carries a student from one of the school's divisions, upper, middle, and lower, with the gold strip given to the mascot. A family who has never set foot on campus sees the whole school at a glance. The lower third stays clean and white to give the images and the logo room to breathe.
Inside: bright and informational
Admissions is an information job, so the inside carries the details about the school. I colored the inner pockets brightly to keep the energy up when a family opens it.
The fundraising folder needed a different feeling. McLean School’s fundraising initiative, TRUE BLUE, is about loyalty, so I pulled the palette toward a more mature register to match the concept and the audience of current families.
To keep it from feeling too serious, I paired it with a playful photo of kids with their arms around each other. TRUE BLUE carries a "we're all in this together" spirit, and that photo said it better than any graphic could.
Inside: carry the moment through
The single cover photo felt a little quiet on its own, so I continued it inside the folder. The image runs from cover to interior instead of stopping at the fold, which makes opening it feel like one continuous moment. The interior also carries the "Be Transformative." school tagline. I wanted the fundraising piece to stay engaging from beginning to end, because giving is what makes a McLean education possible.
Both folders are out in the world now. The admissions folder gets handed to families on tours, and the TRUE BLUE folder goes out with each year's fund materials. I carried both from first layout through print handoff, so what a family holds is exactly what I designed.
Designing them back to back taught me something about working in one brand: the same colors and the same logo can say two different things, depending on who's about to open the folder.