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This project won the 2020 PR Xchange Award in the category of Materials promoting collections, services, and resources.
The New School celebrated its 100th anniversary in October 2019 by hosting a weeklong celebration called The Festival of New. Classes were paused, and all New Yorkers were invited to a series of daily performances, talks, workshops, and cultural events.
The Archives and Special Collections (ASC) supported research projects across the school during the lead up to the centennial. For one of our own contributions, we developed a print campaign to highlight material from across the collections: a deck of “100 Archival Objects.”
Our department collectively selected items to be featured, and each of us contributed to writing and editing the text.
This collaborative project shares the institutional knowledge of the department archivists. The cards were executed fully in-house, since I acted as graphic designer and project manager for photoshoots.
Students were hired from the Parsons School of Design photography program, and credited for their work.
This was the most exciting aspect of the project. Students were able to practice their craft and create work that could be added to a portfolio. We were able to hear their responses to material in real time and discover what grabbed their attention.
A release schedule ensured ongoing engagement across the university.
Cards were released in batches of 10, every 5-6 weeks. We purchased attractive envelopes that were hand delivered to certain offices, and dispersed the cards in public spaces around the university. People began to request that they be included in the delivery schedule for future releases, and we received inquiries about previous cards that they had missed. We continue to see the cards pinned behind desks and shared by students on Instagram.
The cards were not printed with time specific details.
These cards were created for The New School centennial but the set does not contain language that prevents its continued distribution, which is more commonly the case for outreach developed for time-based events (exhibitions, parties, etc.). We continue to use them for orientations, open houses, research visits, and more.
We performed A/B testing through two different formats: postcards and bookmarks.
I wondered if reformatting the cards as a bookmarks and distributing through library checkouts would be a more seamless way to connect with students. We found that in scenarios where cards were offered side by side with the bookmarks, they were almost equally chosen. Though, we discovered that it was hard to manage distribution at the different libraries – activity that falls outside of our department.
This project was interrupted by the pandemic, but we hope to complete the deck and reach #100 in the future. I would also like to imagine a way to make it more of a digital/print hybrid delivery to address the way campus schedules are less predictably in-person these days.