In the city of Omaha

I live in Omaha where I’m able to do design work that emphasizes the importance of community stewardship, engaged neighborhoods, the arts, education, small business, and mass transit. It’s design as civic engagement.

Omaha Lead Registry

Lead contamination in households can be particularly dangerous to children, leading to Elevated Blood Lead levels (EBL) and causing long-term developmental impairment. To protect the health and safety of their children, it’s important for families to know where their home stands in Omaha’s lead remediation efforts.

These digital ads were designed to drive address look-ups on OmahaLead.org which takes a user to an ARCGIS site for them to enter their address and to check on the status of their home.

2020: Design Direction. Digital Design by Jake Welchert & Adam Casey.

Holy Family Community Center

A promotional design system for events to be hosted at the Holy Family Community Center. Inspired by St. Vincent de Paul Society leadership, the current Holy Family brand, and the space itself, the worked involved crafting a visual design language for print flyers and digital graphics to promote events that will take place throughout 2020.

This is a place for gathering and connection. The hope is with a solid design system to communicate with the community, both the current Holy Family supporters and a new audience who is younger, more diverse, and culturally engaged will be brought into to share the space for these communal events (pandemic depending).

2020: Branding, Print, Social.

Roots to Rock

Omaha Girls Rock’s mission is to empower youth to find their unique voice through music education, performance, and creativity. Their goal is to cultivate strong, contributing members of our community.

The design for the Omaha Girls Rock Capital Campaign is executed in a DIY punk-rock zine style. Grit, textures, patterns, tape, layers, lightning bolts, stars, rainbows, bitmaps. Inspired by the OGR logomark. This package of collateral materials has it all. :metal:

2019: Graphic Design, Print. Collaboration with Katie Kemerling.

Omaha Permaculture

A nonprofit organization that maintains unwanted vacant land to elevate the property’s utility and value for the surrounding neighborhood. They create healthy ecosystems through urban agriculture and related economic development. 

Together, we created a landscape manual for their landscaping crews. This manual is a tool for them on various sites around the city. Readable, functional, and easy to work with in the field. 12 months, 4 seasons, and all you need to know to embrace the land in this Midwestern city.

2018–2019: Print, Layout, Illustration. Iconography by Nicholas Burroughs.

Omaha Municipal Land Bank

To serve as a catalyst for transforming distressed properties into community assets. The OMLB is a nonprofit organization working to acquire vacant, abandoned, or dilapidated properties throughout Omaha and either renovate or demolish for future use and growth.

Our team worked with them on a brand streamlining for their collateral materials. With type, colors, imagery, and layout treatments we designed their annual report to clearly both show and tell their success from the previous year. This look will set the tone for more materials to follow.

2019: Design Direction. Graphic Design by Jake Welchert & Adam Casey.

75 North 

Founded in 2011, 75 North has one purpose: to facilitate the creation of healthy, sustainable, mixed-income communities in the Highlander neighborhood. Their goal is to break the cycle of poverty and community deterioration by building thriving schools, recreational facilities, and other amenities to attract new public and private investment to the area.

Highlander is absolutely amazing. For the 75 North offices, we were asked to create a large wall mural to showcase the entire project. The final illustration was a large scene that highlighted all the important spaces and partners. An overhead view with plenty of detail and added dimension to show off the unique architecture and site planning. Vibrant density, open green spaces, and high-quality housing all come together to offer an answer to the question: how do we end poverty? At Highlander, the answer is to make the solution beautiful.

2018: Design Direction. Illustration by Matt Carlson.

Keep Omaha Beautiful

For nearly 60 years, this Omaha area non-profit has been dedicated to litter reduction, community beautification, and education on recycling and environmental stewardship. The new look was designed to feel like an environmental organization while visualizing to the community it’s heading in an exciting new direction.

A modern logo, fresh color palette, concise stationary (printed on 100% post-consumer waste), and unified document templates were delivered as a new brand package. The logo mark puts the big ‘O’ at the center while 2 halves, the urban and the natural, come together to represent stewardship and sustainability. 

2016: Branding, Logo Design. Print & Layout by Adam Casey.

One Omaha

Public-private initiative dedicated to actively facilitating the development of neighborhoods in the City of Omaha through communication, education, and advocacy. This community campaign was designed to allow neighborhoods to feel united while asserting their own individual strength and identity. 

2016: Graphic Design, Community. Collaboration with Adam Casey. Branding by Oxide Design Co.

Omaha Creative Institute

Non-profit arts organization whose mission is to build an audience for the arts in the Omaha metro and to support local artists with tools to allow them to make a living through their artistic practice.

This rebranding focused on clarifying and simplifying. The logomark represents the Greater Omaha community, the individual at the center, and how both of those elements are connected and supported by creativity. From the established art community, connected with bright creativity, to the young emerging artist. Leadership and advocacy, engagement and inspiration.

2015: Branding, Site Design, Squarespace. Collaboration with Jake Welchert.

Making Invisible Histories Visible

An initiative of the Omaha Public Schools, Making Invisible Histories Visible gives students and teachers the opportunity to explore Omaha’s hidden history. Together, they create digital history projects, which OPS social studies teachers can use in their classrooms during future school years. For the project, we established a clear website architecture to be implemented into a DNN theme and provided assets to help visualize their mission.

2015: Design Direction, Site Design. Iconography by Jake Welchert. Logo design by RDQLUS.

Omaha Small Business Network

A leading source for small and micro-business development in Omaha since 1982. OSBN has helped countless small businesses startup and grow in the heart of North Omaha by providing financial support, commercial office space, professional development, and training support.

2015: Design Direction. Branding, Site Design & Development by Jake Welchert.

Metro Forward

From the city’s Metro transit agency, a fully reconfigured bus network that emphasizes more frequency, better night and weekend service, direct lines through high-ridership corridors, and grid-style access to many parts of the city. Read More »

2015: Branding, Campaign. Creative Direction & Copywriting: Daphne Eck. Producer: Nicole Brown

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