June 19, 2018

Seek. Work. Reveal. Win!

Last year, Stoltze designed a brand-new website and companion lookbook for the Watkins College of Art in Nashville. Now, that hard work has paid off with meaningful accolades for both. 

CASE, the Council for the Advancement of Secondary Education, selected the Watkins website redesign for its highest honor, a Circle of Excellence Gold Award-one of just 100 gold winners from over 3,000 creative submissions (3.1 percent!) by higher education institutions! 

Additionally, Communication Arts honored the Watkins lookbook with inclusion in this year's 59th Design Annual. Nearly 4,000 creative projects were submitted to the competition; Stoltze's work for Watkins is among the 131 projects chosen (3.3 percent!) as winners.

The numbers are impressive for a school of any size, let alone small-but-mighty contenders like Watkins. "These awards represent and reward the bold, forward-thinking innovations we have made in our communications and marketing," remarked Watkins President J. Kline, adding: "For a small institution like Watkins to compete at these levels and win their highest honors demonstrates not only the creative power of the college but also the power of a Watkins education."

The website and lookbook are the culmination of the school's brand overhaul, taking their cues from editorial design rather than conventional college recruitment materials. They tell the story of the college and showcase its students' work through feature stories and a dynamic, highly visual design. The awards attest to the power of that message.

We had the pleasure of working with terrific partners on these projects: Watkins Director of Communication, Brendan Tapley, and the entire Watkins creative team; user-experience expert Deborah Levinson; development team Pixelslam; and writing team Thurston-Lighty, LTD.