To Whom It May Concern:
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It’s my pleasure to write to you today to nominate Sarah Jacobs from The University Daily Kansan for the award of Best Designer in the Nation from CNBAM.
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Sarah had worked for The Kansan in a variety of roles for many years now here but it was this past semester when she took over as Creative Director that her talents truly shone through. In this role she supervised a team of 4 separate ad designers, working to ensure daily that their work met the standards of both our organization and its numerous clients. As all great managers do she provided them with constant feedback on the work they put together, built themed challenges around Kansas basketball to stir up their competitive spirit and promptly and efficiently handled matters of discipline and motivation as they arose with her staff. The result of this was a creative staff that grew not only in terms of their work but also in terms of their own professionalism in the office.
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In addition to helping teach her own staff how to excel Sarah provided outstanding design work herself that branded both the clients of The Kansan but also The Kansan itself. Time and time again when Sarah was handed difficult tasks she performed at exemplary levels. She used her skills to design a multi-media campaign for a local optometrist that created walk-in traffic to the advertiser while at the same time provided word puzzle challenges for the readers themselves to solve. She also helped build clever campaign with the Jayhawk Buddy System that encouraged students to make responsible choices while drinking but that also didn’t pound them over the head with the message. And she helped re-launch The Kansan’s new housing site, RockChalkliving.com with a multimedia campaign that grabbed the attention of our daily readers in the paper but also took advantage of lawn signs and city buses to deliver the message.
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It was Sarah’s combination of leadership, creativity and the ability to overcome adversity that made her The Kansan’s hand down choice as the nominee for this award. I hope when you look through her portfolio that you will see that creativity on display while at the same time recognizing that this work helped successfully market not only the businesses The Kansan works with but also The Kansan itself.
! Sincerely, ! !
Jon Schlitt Chief Financial Officer/ Sales and Marketing Adviser The University Daily Kansan
! To Whom It May Concern: !
I am honored to write to you on behalf of Sarah Jacobs from the University Daily Kansan for CNBAM’s Designer of the Year Award.
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Looking back on my time as the student Business Manager, I can confidently say my decision to appoint Sarah as Creative Director was my best staffing decision. Sarah was a unique hire. She is a journalism student in a position typically filled by a student studying solely design. She also previously worked on the editorial staff designing the daily paper as well as a classified account executive for the advertising staff. Basically, she can do it all – and has for that matter. She is a self-taught designer and has more drive than most. From her very first interview, I knew that she would be an irreplaceable staff member. In her interview, she came in with ideas of ways to improve the Kansan’s advertising designs right off the bat. She used her experience on the Editorial side to develop a stronger, more effective ad that would be noticed amidst the paper.
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Sarah’s design process is unlike any other I have seen. I witnessed this best while working with her on a strategic marketing campaign to launch the Kansan’s housing site, RockChalkLiving.com. Her background in marketing and advertising supported by her natural aptitude and talent for design fueled this campaign. We met three times a week leading up to the launch of the campaign to talk overall strategy, objectives and long-term goals. While talking strategy with Sarah, she was able to use her talents in design to effectively convey the strategic messages developed. She was a creative, copywriter, designer, and marketing strategist for this campaign, which is the reason why it was successful. Every piece of copy or idea the team came up with, Sarah would immediately start developing the most strategic design to effectively communicate the message with our target audience.
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On top of that, Sarah handled some of the Kansan’s biggest clients’ artwork. Every piece of artwork she developed was paired with a strong, effective message. She was adamant about the account reps taking their designers on sales calls. She would actively seek out her account reps to travel on the calls with them. I watched Sarah put her all in every single thing she produced from start to finish. She started her design process by knowing the client and their product and ended it with a perfected ad in the Daily Kansan. Sarah refuses to put her name on anything until it was perfected and this showed in her finished products.
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On top of her involvement with the RockChalkLiving.com team and handling some of the biggest names at the Kansan, Sarah was a manager of four creative designers. Sarah made it her goal to not only improve her skill set as a designer, but to improve each and every designer on her staff. With her background in marketing and advertising, she was able to coach her staff on how to design these messages adequately. She was one of the best managers on staff. Every week Sarah had each designer send her an ad that they thought was good and another that they needed help with. Sarah then met with each designer on an individual basis to discuss their work and how to improve it.
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Sarah’s love and dedication to the Kansan is obvious through her work ethic and everything she’s produced. I know that in her portfolio you are able to see the influence that Sarah had as her time as Creative Director. Both in her portfolio and through her letters of recommendation it is obvious that Sarah made a difference at the Kansan, which is why she is our unanimous nominee for Designer of the Year.
! Sincerely, !
Mollie Pointer Business Manager The University Daily Kansan
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