Donor Beatrice Header

Expe­ri­en­tial Donor Recog­ni­tion Wall Brought To Life With Bub­bles, Gum­balls, and Grass at Beat­rice Pub­lic Schools

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 with the dis­trict team 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.

Beatrice Elementary Color Palette Labeled

The Chal­lenge: 
Merg­ing Archi­tec­ture with Donor Recognition

The dis­trict grant­ed Lat­i­tude cre­ative free­dom, pro­vid­ing build­ing ele­va­tions, a fin­ish sched­ule, and an inte­ri­or col­or board. The pri­ma­ry chal­lenge was twofold:

  1. Inte­grate the cam­paign’s four local­ized tiers of giv­ing into the design: Inno­va­tion, Inspi­ra­tion, Advance­ment, and Encouragement.
  2. Design an envi­ron­ment-spe­cif­ic instal­la­tion that engaged an ele­men­tary-aged audi­ence with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the clean, pro­fes­sion­al aes­thet­ic required for donor acknowledgment.

The Design-Build Process

1. Con­cept Piv­ot: From Indus­tri­al Gears to ​“Soap Bubbles”

Andrej Stein­bergs, expe­ri­en­tial graph­ic design­er, was inspired by the col­ors in a pro­vid­ed 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 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 using cir­cles rather than gears. That piece of feed­back got us mov­ing in the right direction.

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 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.

Beatrice Donor Bubble Details

2. Engi­neer­ing Tex­tures through Graph­ic Manipulation

To cre­ate sen­so­ry inter­est with­out intro­duc­ing high-main­te­nance tac­tile mate­ri­als, the school dis­trict request­ed the illu­sion of tex­ture. The design team brain­stormed icon­ic, cir­cu­lar, and nat­ur­al tex­tures that res­onate with chil­dren, inte­grat­ing them via dig­i­tal manipulation:

  • Play­ful ele­ments: Gum­balls, rub­ber band balls, and ball pits.
  • Organ­ic ele­ments: Bare feet in sand and fresh grass.

Pro­duc­tion design­ers manip­u­lat­ed macro pho­tog­ra­phy, apply­ing cus­tom col­or casts and fil­ters to seam­less­ly merge these pat­terns into the donor bubbles.

3. Dimen­sion­al Lay­out and Prototyping

To estab­lish depth in a three-dimen­sion­al space, the final bub­ble graph­ics were fab­ri­cat­ed in vary­ing diam­e­ters (18”, 14”, and 10”) and stag­gered mate­r­i­al thick­ness­es. Detailed pro­duc­tion draw­ings with drop shad­ows and mul­ti-angle side views ensured pre­ci­sion dur­ing fab­ri­ca­tion and instal­la­tion. They also helped our team and the client bet­ter under­stand how a 2D draw­ing would look in the 3D world.

Beatrice Donor Wall 2

Solv­ing the Com­plex­i­ties of Donor Name Typog­ra­phy & Future Scalability

Names can be the trick­i­est part of a donor wall. A sin­gle font needs to fit all lengths of names in all sizes of cir­cles. The client want­ed to make sure the names 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. Designs are in con­stant flux until the phys­i­cal dis­play is man­u­fac­tured. Clients often want to add donors to their dis­plays as time goes on, and these dynam­ic donor walls can grow while main­tain­ing con­cep­tu­al integri­ty. Uti­liz­ing mod­u­lar, detached com­po­nents ensures a donor dis­play is mal­leable and can han­dle future nam­ing updates with­out a com­plete sys­tem overhaul.

With this par­tic­u­lar design, we worked from the cen­ter of the dis­play out­ward and left room for the dis­play wall to grow. This strat­e­gy left delib­er­ate, bal­anced neg­a­tive space along the perime­ter, allow­ing Beat­rice Pub­lic Schools to mount addi­tion­al donor bub­bles as their cap­i­tal cam­paigns expand over time. 

Con­nect with our sign design and fab­ri­ca­tion spe­cial­ists at connect@​latitudesignage.​com.

Learn more about donor recog­ni­tion sig­nage here.

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