From the Nominator

Leaders & Best is the premier philanthropic magazine of the University of Michigan, a high-profile publication that celebrates our community’s generosity. This prominent offering highlights giving across our three campuses and its profound impact on the wider world. This special edition of Leaders & Best highlights the Look to Michigan fundraising campaign and its four priority impact areas: life-changing education, health and well-being, sustainability and climate action, and democracy, civic, and global engagement. These topics speak to urgent, critical challenges society faces. To create a cohesive, visual narrative, our four featured articles needed a distinct artistic direction to bring them to life. Given the consequential nature of these topics, we wanted the editorial art to be vivid, thought-provoking, and be equally serious and whimsical. Our in-house Multimedia Designer, Adam Beeman, worked with pencil and paper at the start, sketching a multitude of ideas before landing on a unified set of drawings. From here, he worked digitally to craft the finished pieces. The university’s brand colors can be seen throughout, mixed with a modern, bright color palette to round out the art. There were many goals we aimed to accomplish with these illustrations: grab the reader’s attention, be thought provoking, and bring a sense of excitement and urgency to our fundraising campaign. The immediate impact was seen as more eyes and donors have read the special edition, with greater impact to come as we continue the Look to Michigan campaign.

From the Judges

Well done, Adam Beeman! It is wonderful to see that Adam alone managed all of these beautiful illustrations—and in only 32 hours without needing external freelance support. There is a very clear and well-articulated story across all of the illustrations. The design presents as high-quality and is clean and structured. It is always wonderful to see projects with a clear vision, interconnected design work, and a powerful voice. This is a beautifully executed piece that managed to bring a cohesive look to the various topics covered.