FLC Marketing & Communications team brings home more UCDA awards

From ensuring Skyler the Skyhawk looks fit to spicing up the FLC website and all the press releases and TV commercials between, the FLC Marketing & Communications team stays busy year-round. MarComm’s all-star lineup of communications experts are best known for their brilliant brainstorming sessions and efficiencies in conjuring creative solutions. And thanks to the University & College Designers Association, FLC’s stellar design team has 28 awards to back at least one of those proud claims. 

The UCDA launched in 1970 and serves as the preeminent body for bestowing graphic design awards on educational institutions. The prestigious UCDA Design Awards are presented to winners at the annual UCDA conference, which celebrates 51 years this October. While FLC has been a member of the UCDA since 2009, Art Director Anna McBrayer has been entering MarComm’s design work to the Design Awards competition since she started working at FLC in 2015, bringing home anywhere from one to seven awards each year. 

For the 2021 UCDA Design Awards, the MarComm design team fetched four coveted distinctions: McBrayer won an Honorable Mention for her creation of the Environment & Climate Institute logo; FLC Photographer Ben Brashear took Honorable Mention for his action-packed Athletics profile photography; and Student Marketing Team intern Lillian Meador (Communication Design, ’21) earned Silver and Excellence awards for her intergalactic illustrations designed for the recently revamped Rocket Grill in FLC’s Student Union. 

The 1,000 plus contestants who enter the annual UCDA Design Awards competitions are judged by a hand-picked panel of peer jurors composed of designers, design educators, illustrators, and photographers, who also work in educational institutions. 

“The fact that we show so well in this competition is pretty awesome,” says McBrayer. “It's very competitive because many of the schools who participate have budgets large enough that all of their work is done through an agency with big price tags and what seems like unlimited resources. Our recognition at UCDA just goes to show the caliber of talent on our professional team as well as our student interns who leverage FLC in the marketplace of higher education right here on campus.” 

McBrayer has served as a volunteer at six out of the last seven conferences and presented a workshop on developing and running a team of student interns, a successful program she launched at FLC in 2018. She’s the co-chair of this fall’s UCDA soiree in Denver and will chair the 2022 UCDA Design Awards Conference in Bernalillo, New Mexico, next fall.

To see the complete collection of FLC’s UCDA Design Awards, visit fortlewis.edu/flc-marketing.