CAMPAIGN CASE STUDY
CLOSER
THAN YOU
Closer Than You Think™ was created to help rural Colorado students and families see college as something possible.
Not far away. Not meant for someone else. Not hidden behind confusing steps or big institutional language.
The campaign needed to meet people where they were and make the next chapter feel a little more real. My job was to help build the visual world around that idea.
THE CHALLENGE
For a lot of rural students and families, college can feel distant before the conversation even starts.
It is not always about ambition. Sometimes it is about cost, distance, time, confidence, or simply not knowing where to begin. The campaign had to speak to that reality without talking down to anyone.
We needed something bold enough to get noticed across Colorado, but still warm enough to feel personal. It had to feel like an invitation.
THE ROLE
I helped lead this campaign from the earliest creative direction through launch.
That meant shaping the look, the tone, the art direction, the website experience, and the way the system showed up across different campaign pieces. I worked with internal teams, client stakeholders, filmmakers, and creative partners to keep the work feeling connected as it grew.
This project had a lot of moving parts, but the heart of it stayed the same. Every decision needed to bring the message closer to the people it was made for.
I started with the idea of connection. Connection to place, to community and to a future that might feel closer than expected. The early sketches helped us explore a world that felt rooted in Colorado, but still full of movement and hope.
I didn’t want this to feel like generic college marketing. The campaign had to move quickly, scale across a lot of different channels, and still feel personal at every touchpoint.
That early direction gave us something to build from. It became the foundation for a larger visual system that could stretch across digital, social, broadcast, web, and partner materials without losing the heart of the idea.
THE MOSAIC
A CENTRAL STORYTELLING DEVICE
The mosaic became the heart of the campaign.
It gave us a way to show many different stories living inside one bigger picture. There were students, families, campuses, landscapes, small moments, and future possibilities all connected together.
That mattered because the campaign was not about making college feel huge. It was about making it feel reachable.
The mosaic let us tell a statewide story without losing the personal pieces inside it. It could work as one large hero image, or it could break apart into smaller moments for social, video, print, web, and partner materials.
