The Baptist College of Health Sciences recruitment team requested a follow-up piece to be mailed to students to remind them to visit, connect, and apply. The team wanted a unique and memorable piece that students would be likely to keep.

We had recently finished a pennant design and I had noticed a few pinned to bulletin boards on around campus. As we were brainstorming, I stated, “Too bad we can’t mail them all the new pennant.” But as I thought about it, I realized maybe we could if it was folded so that it fit in an envelope.

The Art of Caring is an annual silent art auction that benefits patient assistance at the Baptist Reynolds Hospice House & free bereavement services at the Kemmons Wilson Family Center for Good Grief.

The Baptist Foundation wanted the invitation's new design to every year. Corporate Communications wanted an evergreen design that could be updated with minimal revisions. I suggested a compromise. Let's create a new "Art of Caring at..." lock-up each year but keep the rest of the design.

Sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board on a concept. The client had initially requested the cover have a theme of 'Cancer is a Journey'. I learned a new Photoshop technique and presented some cover concepts for that theme.

But the copy of the report actually focused more on many different ways that Baptist is leading through innovation, clinical research and expertise. My ‘cool’ cover design wasn’t a good fit. I didn’t want the cover to be just a collage of photos. I wanted the cover to support the message. An arrow seemed like the clearest way to illustrate advancement and leading the way. As a bonus, the inside cover clearly labels each photo and explains their significance.

The Baptist Foundation wanted to invite people to come tour the Kemmons Wilson Family Center for Good Grief in Collierville, Tenn. and learn more about the services. They had already had a great headline for the pieces – ‘See the Good in Grief’ for the tours and ‘Be the Good in Grief’ for asking for donations or volunteers.

While brainstorming the piece with the team, I kept thinking of children's rhyme, "Here's the church, and here's the steeple. Open the door and see all the people."

Sometimes the only way to get on the same page with a client is to learn their language. There is a lot of jargon in design and marketing that clients don’t always use correctly. It can lead to confusion if you aren’t digging deeper to find out why they want something.

Apparently, I don’t speak college recruiter. We were meeting with the recruitment team and they had come prepared with printed samples from competitors. I could see what they were asking for but I didn't understand why. Design should have a purpose. So I asked when the next college fair was going to be and if I could attend.

At the college fair, I collected samples, watched students interact with materials, took photos of the booths, and took it all back to our marketing team. Then we spread it all out and discussed which college pieces were the strongest. We pointed out the trends we noticed. We learned the language of recruitment fairs and applied it to the new designs. We used our war room to test the new concepts and see how they stacked up. I was really pleased with the results.

The Baptist Memorial Health Care community reports were designed to vary in design, format and size from edition to edition. The differences helped our communication teams to easily recognize the latest edition. Here are a few of my favorites.

This all started in a meeting with Baptist Foundation and corporate communications to discuss tactics for Giving Tuesday. As we were brainstorming, I thought about the recent news coverage I had seen about 901Rocks.

As an artist, I found the community art project interesting. You paint a rock, hide it, share it with #901Rocks, and hope that someone finds it and hides it again. Maybe I could paint the yellow balloon from the Camp Good Grief memorial service.

I jotted down the idea, but it didn't seem feasible. When was I going to have the time to sit down and paint a bunch of rocks? But the idea wouldn't let go. I started doing research on 901Rocks. But I hadn't had time to find or buys some rocks to experiment on.

So a week or two later, I'm sitting at church and they wheel out a couple of carts of smooth river rocks. These are handed out as a keepsake to remind you to find ways to give back using your talents. When I got home I immediately started painting. Encouraged by the first rock, I eventually bought and painted 20 rocks. I created a production process for efficiency.

With the help of friends and coworkers, we placed the rocks all around town on Giving Tuesday. You can read more about the project here.

I really love opportunities that allow me to combine my photography, illustration and design skills into one piece. It didn’t hurt that our silent art auction was held in the inspiring Crosstown Concourse. One of the little features I like about this piece is how it turns into its own mini poster when opened. Perfect for pinning to the fridge.

Sometimes the real challenge of a design is finding a way to print it within your budget. For this Baptist College job, I spent at least as much time on figuring out the quote and die lines as I did the design. By brainstorming with my vendor, not only did we solve the design goals but we created an affordable solution that reduced the production costs. By quoting the project first, I saved time by not creating designs would later turn out to be too costly for our budget and need to be revised.

The finished piece is a self-mailing pocket folder that can hold a letter from the admissions team and additional information for the student.

When your personal work influences your professional work, fun things happen. I’ve been using these “Chester Speaks” cards for years as part of my personal stationery. They are fun and allow me to write whatever message on the front. Happy birthday, Thank you, etc. When the Baptist College asked me to create a stationary set for the admissions team, I applied this flexible quote bubble design to their cards. The full set includes a playful envelope.

You must be thinking, “why are you including a boring form in your portfolio?” To my in-house marketing team, this is a thing of beauty. How often do you receive a request via email that is missing vital information such as the ad size or event date? All the time, right. Or maybe it's just a forwarded long email thread and you have no idea what the request is exactly. Well, we created an interactive pdf form to capture the basic information that we need to start a job. It's not a perfect tool, but we continue to improve it for our internal use. If you require in-house clients to complete a job request form, it cuts down on the confusion and emails trying to collect all the information you need.

A few years back, I created a simple tabloid size calendar for myself to use at Baptist. It has lots of reminders for annual events, health awareness day/week/month and reminders to open jobs. Since I work in-house, a lot of our jobs happen every year. Add office holidays etc. I made a generic one to share this year and its saved as a pdf or indd file.