Liberty art students liven up school’s hallways with original designs

Liberty University’s School of Communication & the Arts in Marie F. Green Hall is a place where one can cross paths with a future filmmaker, marketing leader, stage star, visual artist, or digital creator. To represent this diversity of disciplines, the school tasked a team of students to create and install environmental graphics on walls throughout the space that cultivate a creative environment, better define the different departments’ locations, and showcase SCA’s exciting programs.

“It got started with a request from Dean (Scott) Hayes a few years ago,” said studio & digital arts Professor Stacy Cannon. “He brought a team of us from the school together and spoke about this idea of creating a cohesive visual identity for the spaces of SCA. After having (SCA) split up and reconnected multiple times in the years leading up to that time, it made sense that we’d want to create designs to mark it as a unified space and demonstrate what our departments are.”

Cannon said a team of mainly graduate students, with some undergraduates, did a lot of the groundwork in 2020 including the research and discussions with the five SCA departments — cinematic arts, digital media & journalism, strategic & personal communication, studio & digital arts, and theatre arts — to determine the art and how it would be displayed.

“Something that is unique about the School of Communication & the Arts is that it has very distinct departments within it that have their own identities, personalities, and goals,” Cannon said. “It was a bit of a challenge initially for us to figure out how to represent each of those departments visually and then also allow them to come together as a unified school, as well as use designs that function well with Liberty’s branded marketing environment.”

While many of the graphics serve as signage, there are also mottos on various walls, such as “Where creativity is cultivated” and “Where communications is impactful,” mosaics of promotional photos taken by department photographers, and elements that represent all departments within one piece. Each department has its own icon and color.

The project was funded by a grant from Liberty’s Office of Sponsored Programs & Research that supported the team’s research; a visit to Iconograph, a studio in Charlottesville, Va.; and the cost of production.

Graduate student Avery Veenstra, who worked on the project, said the designs not only serve as a guide for visitors but help encourage students’ creativity.

“Green Hall can be a maze, and I think it helps students understand where our spaces actually are,” she said. “When you’re in a creative space, you’re more likely to be inspired and create. One of the goals, even from the first phase, was to build a space where students would want to be in, would want to create in, and would find little pockets of places to collaborate with one another in. We’ve done that well, transforming the space with intentionality. I feel like I have seen a lot more students sitting in those alcoves, working and talking with one another.”

“It’s going to be really nice too for events, like College For A Weekend, and when visitors are here, because now we have more defined entrances to our space,” Cannon added. “It’s nice to have that identity when you walk into it; it’s a good way to showcase what the department can do and what the students can do while they’re here at Liberty.”

For the students who contributed to the project, the experience was an opportunity to put industry skills into practice at each stage of the process — pitching, designing, gathering feedback, and producing. Multiple students from the original team have used the experience as material for their professional portfolios and earned positions as a result.

“We got to see the project through, from the research phase to the sketching and ideation, to actually pitching these ideas how you would to a client in a real-world setting,” Veenstra said.

“Through this project, our Studio & Digital Arts students are gaining hands-on experience by crafting a unified visual identity for the School of Communication & the Arts, bringing creativity and cohesion to the spaces that define us,” Hayes added.