St. John’s College
The third oldest college in the country is defined by its small class size, lively academic discussions, and a rigorous liberal arts curriculum rooted in the study of original classical texts. “Johnnies”—as its students and alumni call themselves—are not your typical college kids. As Designer at Arrow, I created multiple digital ad campaigns to target potential students by speaking to them in their own language. Here are three of them.
ClientSt. John’s College
My ContributionDigital Campaign Design
Copywriting
For the Young Readers
This campaign for SJC’s Summer Academy for High School Students is aimed at the program’s key audience: lovers of the Great Books. Showing some of their favorite authors with their “summer modes activated,” it beckons potential students to join in on their kind of summer fun.
For Fearless Seekers in Uncertain Times
This campaign targeting undergraduates ran during the Covid-19 pandemic, when many things felt uncertain, including whether attending college in person was safe or not.
One version of this campaign uses beautiful photography of SJC’s scenic, spacious Santa Fe campus paired with copy that speaks directly to the confidence of the true academic explorers that the College seeks to attract.
The second version highlights some of history’s great minds who made their biggest contributions to the world during pandemics, calling on potential students to “unleash their greatness” just like their academic heroes.
Schools of Thought
This campaign’s goal was to recruit students for the SJC Graduate Institute’s Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degree. To illustrate the program’s interdisciplinary nature and deep roots in Western tradition, I featured Raphael’s painting The School of Athens as the key image. The fresco—depicting the central figure of Plato holding up his index finger and surrounded by a slew of famous philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists of the time—is recognizable to just the type of scholar that SJC aims to attract and gives them a taste of what they can expect from the masters program.
