U-Week is a community-building event held for the residents of the UND Apartment Community each year. This year, the planning committee wanted something more substantial and cohesive for its advertising. The theme “Include me, empower me” was at the core of the design work I did.

The original brief for the logo was to incorporate hands in some way. The committee felt that the hands were logical starting points for connecting one person to another. Because of the very diverse population of the UND Apartment Community, a multi-colored approach was requested.

I had been itching to create something by hand (no pun intended) for a while, and this was the perfect opportunity. I asked many of my co-workers for their hands. We scanned each one and I used these profiles to create several unique silhouettes, which became the basis of the design.

Another important design element required by the committee was the letter ‘U’. This event has been known as ‘U-Week’ since it began, so an emphasis on that single letter seemed like an obvious choice.

After some playing around with the hand silhouettes, I arrived at the following solution, which the committee loved. Amanda Smith, a senior Graphic Design major at UND, designed the large poster for campus-wide distribution.

The final U-Week logo

Poster design by Amanda Smith, UND Graphic Design major