During my time at the University of Alberta, I had the opportunity to build the brand identity for Crossings, an undergraduate student journal launched in 2021. As part of the original team, I developed the logo design, website layout, and social media content, shaping the journal’s presence from the ground up. The goal was to create a platform that showcased diverse student perspectives while balancing a professional, academic tone with a modern and engaging design. This project highlighted the power of branding, layout design, and digital strategy in making academic work more accessible and exciting.
The first volume of Crossings was a unique challenge—without images, the design relied entirely on layout and typography to create a modern, engaging reading experience. The goal was to establish a flexible yet cohesive visual identity that could evolve while maintaining consistency. By developing a strong design system, Crossings now has a framework that ensures adaptability without losing its core aesthetic, making it a timeless and innovative publication.
Crossings volume one
The second volume of Crossings allowed me to push the boundaries of layout design, blending custom visuals with student and alumni work from the University of Alberta. This edition reinforced the brand’s studious yet youthful identity—balancing serious, thought-provoking messages with engaging, modern design. My approach centered on collage art, a medium rooted in political expression and youth-led movements, which aligned seamlessly with the journal’s themes. This design direction created a visually dynamic and impactful publication, making Crossings both a scholarly and creative statement.
Crossings volume two
What’s the Brand?
Guided by the keywords studious, academic, youthful, and impactful, I designed Crossings to reflect the voices of university students visually. My research focused on understanding student interests and ensuring the design felt both engaging and meaningful.
The colour palette embraced bold primary colors, evoking a classic academic feel, while textures and mixed media played a key role in the layout. Inspired by collage art, I layered diverse elements to mirror the journal’s purpose—a collection of unique ideas coming together to form one cohesive, impactful publication.
For this logo, it was important to create something both timeless and formal, something that would feel at home in an academic setting, while still carrying a youthful energy that reflects its primary audience: students, and the fact that the journal is created by students.
Throughout the design process, the organization emphasized the need for a mark that could stand alone and be instantly recognizable. The visual language draws inspiration from the simplicity and playful minimalism reminiscent of the heavy Tumblr era we were all immersed in at the time.
Within our team, a recurring inside joke was the obsession with punctuation and how much it mattered to us as writers and editors. Incorporating the period into the logotype became a subtle nod to that shared humor, while also giving the wordmark a sense of confidence and finality, almost like a statement in itself.
