The Association of University Architects (AUA) is a professional organization comprising college and university architects from institutions of higher learning across the United States and Canada. Each summer, the AUA holds its annual conference on a different college campus, with a unique logo and branding reflecting the hosting institution and city. For the 2024 conference, hosted by UMass Amherst, I was hired to develop a logo and branding for the event. As part of the brief, I was asked to incorporate AUA’s official monogram logo and a representation of UMass’s iconic W.E.B. Du Bois Library, the 28-story tower designed by Edward Durell Stone.

The theme of the conference, “Reinventing the Modern,” focused on Modernist and Brutalist architecture on North American campuses. After developing dozens of prototypes over a six-month period, the planning committee selected a design featuring a psychedelic pattern that reflects the conference’s emphasis on the 1960s and 1970s. For this logo, I designed a custom typeface inspired by the AUA monogram and integrated the pattern within the block of letters.