How Bubbles, Gumballs, and Grass Brought a Donor Display to Life

Creating a visually dynamic donor wall at an elementary school to honor donors.

Beatrice Public Schools, located in Beatrice, Nebraska, was looking for a donor recognition display that would adequately honor the individuals, families, and organizations that support the school district’s mission to be among the best in the nation. Through our Design-Build process we collaborated to create a unique, visually dynamic donor recognition display that draws adults’ attention and gives kids something fun and colorful to look at throughout their school day.

Donor Wall Assignment: It’s Elementary

Beatrice Public Schools trusted us to have free reign with design and provided elevations for the installation location in the elementary school along with their color board and finish schedule to help us understand the design intent. They wanted to incorporate the campaign’s key words, which double as the different levels of giving within the campaign: INNOVATION, INSPIRATION, ADVANCEMENT, and ENCOURAGEMENT.

Our Experiential Graphic Designer, Andrej, was inspired by the colors in a carpet sample, which had a base of gray with bold primary colors mixed in. Playing off those colors helped us come up with a kid-centric design that would fill well in the space.

The first concept was based on the idea of a factory or machine and involved gears working together. The various gears created the idea of motion, adding visual interest beyond just colors. While the Beatrice team liked the general concept, they wanted to see something simplified, maybe using just circles rather than gears. That piece of feedback got us moving in the right direction.

Conceptual Design Lands On Bubble Theme

As we played with different circle concepts, we wanted to keep kids in mind. What would draw children in and help brighten their day? Eventually, the idea of soap bubbles came to life. What kid doesn’t like bubbles?

Once we settled on bubbles, we added a silhouette of a child blowing bubbles to the right of the main recognition signage. While the Beatrice team loved the bubbles, they wanted to go with a more abstract display. To make sure the bubbles really came to life, we added some subtle reflections that would also help make the circles pop off the wall. The key words Beatrice gave us of INNOVATION, INSPIRATION, ADVANCEMENT, and ENCOURAGEMENT were woven throughout the bubble design, helping to lead the eye through the display.

Creating Visual Interest in Donor Design

The Beatrice team came up with the brilliant idea of using textures in the display wall – things people might be tempted to reach out and touch. While they didn’t want to use actual textures, which would distract from the main purpose of the wall, they asked us to create the illusion of textures.

The team brainstormed on kid-centric textures that could work with the bubble theme. What circular things do kids like? Gumballs, rubber band balls, and ball pits came to mind. We also wanted to incorporate a few organic textures that could be found in nature, and we thought of kids’ bare feet in the grass or sand.

Narrowing down the texture illusions helped final colors come into focus. We created color casts, or filters, of each texture by deconstructing and manipulating existing photography and imagery.

The bubbles were designed to be varying sizes and thicknesses to give dimension and add visual interest to the wall. They ended up being 18”, 14”, and 10” in diameter. Design elements like drop shadows and side views in concept and production drawings helped our team and the client better understand how the 2D drawing would look in the 3D world.

Donor Name Flux

Names can be the trickiest part of a donor wall. Our team had to find a font that fit with all lengths of names in all sizes of circles. The client wanted to make sure the names really popped out from the bubbles, because after all, the donor names are the entire point of a donor recognition wall. A simple sans serif font that felt kid-friendly and was clean and readable was the way to go.

During the design process, names can change, or a donor might move from a lower-tier donation to a higher tier. Our designs are in constant flux until we are ready to manufacture the physical display. With this particular design, we worked from the center of the display outward and left room for the display wall to grow. Our clients often want to add donors to their displays as time goes on, and these malleable, or dynamic, donor walls can grow while maintaining conceptual integrity.

Donor Recognition Display Expertise

Have questions about this project? Reach out to us at connect@latitudesignage.com.

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Learn more about donor recognition signage here.