Cultural Vistas Programs
Building Bridges between Cultures through Branding
Cultural Vistas (CV) partners with institutions around the world to organize specialized international programs that promote experiential learning and cultural understanding.
As Senior Designer, I created visual branding and all related collateral for many of these programs. As they often varied in theme and countries, I collaborated with respective program teams to verify that branding was relevant and culturally appropriate.
By prioritizing cultural sensitivity and openness to ideas, we helped strengthen partnerships by showing our belief that design is better when it’s more inclusive.
Role:
Branding, Print and Web Design
YSEALI Generations
Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) is a U.S. government signature program that strengthens leadership development and networking in Southeast Asia. YSEALI’s Generation Workshops offer young leaders the chance to participate in hands-on-training to gain the tools necessary to lead their communities in addressing economic, environmental, educational, and civic engagement issues.
With the YSEALI logo in mind, workshop branding was designed to be simple and bold, using universal symbolism to represent the themes of each workshop: a seedling for Generation EARTH, a fish for Generation OCEANS, and a person/clipboard for Generation Go NGO.
Korea WEST
Korea WEST (Work, English Study, Travel) is an exchange program that sends top South Korean students and young professionals to the United States to work, learn English, and explore American culture.
Branding was designed to represent the partnership between South Korea and the United States. Elements from both nation’s flags, stripes from America and trigrams from Korea, were used in layouts and the logomark.
Celebrate the Connections
Celebrate the Connections was an exchange program that sent six hip hop artists of varying artforms from the United States to India to teach, collaborate, and perform their crafts.
Identifying similar views on authentic visual expressions between hip hop and Indian communities, I designed branding and the logotype to be more playful and ingenuous, inspired by local hip hop community centers and the Indian flag.
Fun fact: Fellow Celebrate the Connections artist Fatimah White created her own version of the logotype to commemorate the program.
CBYX Alumni Association
Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) funds exchange programs for German and American students through grants to private exchange organizations in both countries. The alumni association unites the network of Americans who have participated in CBYX programs.
Branding was designed to represent the partnership between Germany and the United States using elements from both nation’s flags.
