The National Leadership of Kappa Kappa Psi National Band Fraternity wanted to encourage alumni brothers to become Life Members, while also celebrating the birthday of Bohumil Makovsky – the Guiding Spirit of the Fraternity.
Bohumil Makovsky was the Director of Bands and Head of the Department of Music at Oklahoma A&M College (now – Oklahoma State University) during the founding of Kappa Kappa Psi. He was born on September 23, 1878. So, on September 23, 2016, Kappa Kappa Psi had a one day only, 20% off sale on Life Memberships.
When I was approached about designing a logo to help promote “Boh’s Birthday Bash”, I immediately wanted to incorporate an image of Boh. I’m far from a master of drawing but thought I could get enough of his essential features to make an illustration. First, I printed out one of his most iconic images and took it over to the Lightbox. The long neglected Lightbox was finally being put into the game.
I traced over the photo, with the goal of getting the crucial elements down – one of those being his bow-tie. After finishing my illustrated Boh portrait, I took a photo of it , uploaded it, and brought it into Adobe Illustrator. In Illustrator, I created the vector image of Boh’s face. Once I had Boh the way I wanted, I began thinking about color and how I wanted to fit it within the text of “Boh’s Birthday Bash”.
The font I used was Trajan Pro, which is the same font used in the overall Kappa Kappa Psi brand identity. The color was the official darker blue of the Fraternity and a lighter shade of blue was chosen to complement the dark blue.
To provide some variety in the marketing of the event, I created 3 different graphics. One was just the illustration of Boh. The second was the logo with the illustration and the text. The third was a full mini-flyer with more details on the Life Membership sale.
Usually, when creating social media content for organizations, I try to make sure the page feed isn’t spamming the exact same graphic and copy over and over again. I used the graphics on a rotation leading up to the day and throughout the day itself.
On September 23rd alone, there were over 80 new Life Memberships purchased. The idea was a success and I was very happy to be a part of this campaign. Honoring the past can be a great inspiration and motivator.
~b.