Get Back to What Matters was an outcome of Cassie Hester’s thesis research for her MFA in Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The semantic elements of Get Back to What Matters evoke a simpler time, when drawing and being creative was a source of delight. Placed in the high-stress environment of the university’s design department in the midst of the last few weeks of the semester, the fleeting crayon installation was a reminder to students to get back to what matters: making with your hands, interacting with others, and exercising your imagination.

For Elevate 2014, an annual pop-up festival sponsored by the city of Atlanta, the Goat Farm Arts Center, a “creative industrial complex” that produces vanguard arts programming, conceived the D_MPSTERS program. They acquired 10 large roll-a-way trash containers, parked them on underused downtown streets, and curated a weeklong exhibition within them. Second Story, part of SapientNitro, was responsible for activating one of the dumpsters based on Elevate’s central theme: Social City.

Holmes Wood created a new wayfinding scheme for Oxford Brookes University that complements its new architecture and a modernized attitude toward teaching.