During my time at the Lindenwood Makerspace, I was tasked with making the poster (and surrounding media) for Lindenwood University’s 2025 production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. I found the use of typefaces similar to Franklin Gothic really common when it came to things like 50’s album covers, and after looking at a ton of Christmas catalogs on the Internet Archive, I found a really nice set of illustrated Christmas ornaments that I knew I had to include. The brief also came with a very strict set of rules from the musical’s rights holders as to how the text should be laid out, and in what sizes, to give proper credit to the original creators. This was difficult at first, but as the design of the poster began to take shape it wasn’t so bad.

I continued to take cues from those Christmas catalogs and came up with something that I think did a great job of calling back to the time in which White Christmas was filmed. It was really well received by the students and patrons before and during the show!

This logo was created as part of a logo design competition held by Lindenwood University for the Lindenwood Showcase (archive), an event showing the achievements of students and faculty across all departments. Each logo was voted on by faculty, staff and students, and mine was the winner!

Process

From the very beginning, I began to think about how to visually represent the idea of showing something, as well as appearing academic but agnostic to any specific discipline.

After spending some time in my sketchbook, I settled on the nib of a fountain pen to represent academics. After all, any academic endeavor, whether it’s art, writing, math, biology or otherwise, relies on making or reading marks to work. Using a writing utensil to represent academics isn’t a new idea, but I think the form of a fountain pen’s nib is a much more unique and less used form than a pencil (which seems somewhat elementary) or quill (which can come across as dated).

I also settled on using radiating lines to convey showing something. This also isn’t a unique idea, especially in the context of the competition. Many of my competitors used the same thing, and even previous logos for the competition used radiating lines. However, it is the most straightforward way to communicate this concept, and gave me the opportunity to use some of the alternate colors that were provided in the Lindenwood University Branding Guidelines.

Once I had both of these ideas I sat down and got to work, ending up with this:

Results

I think that what made this logo better than the others and different from the previous winners was that it appeared much more contemporary. Many of the logos that were submitted relied on Lindenwood’s history, using things like books, quills, pillars, etc. Many also used Bembo Std after seeing the Lindenwood logotype, which at times worked with the rest of their designs but sometimes would have been better served by Trade Gothic. I thought that something that focused on the university’s history didn’t serve this sort of event, as it is fundamentally about what students are doing now and showing their future potential.