GDES Alum Designs Visual Identity for SIGD 80th Anniversary

This year marks the 80^th anniversary of Auburn University Industrial and Graphic Design programs. Founded in 1945 in the School of Architecture and the Arts, the programs have expanded and evolved over the previous century, with Industrial Design becoming a department in 1977 and Graphic Design joining it thirty years later. In 2013, College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) established the official School of Industrial and Graphic Design (SIGD) in recognition of its quality of and commitment to design education.

As part of SIGD’s 80^th anniversary year-long celebration, Dove created a visual identity that commemorates the school’s legacy. In collaboration with SIGD School Head Wei Wang, Dove drew on the programs’ histories for the design.

“I’ve always thought of SIGD as a very historical, heritage-rich program,” Dove said, referencing the School’s commitment to teaching design history and context. “We decided to do a flexible identity system that represents the students because they’ve got this malleable future and a whole career of opportunities before them.”

During the design phase, Dove researched the School’s history and many mid-century modernist logos that date back to the programs’ heyday. He then went through rounds of critiques and workshopping with some of his former professors with whom Dove has kept up during his time as a graphic designer and creative director on the East Coast.

“We decided we wanted to do a system-first approach, so that we could come up with a set of rules that could be used flexibly over all kinds of applications and then generate a logo itself,” Dove explained. “I think of myself as a type-forward designer, and one of the directives right out of the gate was to avoid typographic solutions to this problem, because we wanted it to have as much longevity as possible.”

To overcome that, Dove dug into his bag of iconography and image-making, using shape and form to express the School. Dove describes the resulting identity—overlapping trapezoids that create a parallelogram-shaped void, aligned with the text “AUBURN SIGD 80”—as flexible, sophisticated and conceptual, calling out the refined geometry between the logo mark and the ‘A’ in the typeface that’s paired with it.

The design started as a wireframe drawing that introduced a three-dimensional concept into a two-dimensional project.

“The team and I were intrigued by the possibility of a simple polygonal shape that could be stretched and rotated in space to create unlimited unique forms,” Dove said. “In doing so, we could define a language for layout, pattern and motion.”

Tracing the form, the wireframe reduced to a series of connected polygons with a balanced composition. Color fills added weight to the final logo, which is revealed in a short animation.

Using the skills and design history knowledge he learned at Auburn, Dove pulled in esoteric and sophisticated references that other designers might not have.

“Auburn is a very foundational school. We drill the principles here more than we drill trends and chase new hot topics, so I think that’s something that’s carried over into my professional career,” he said. “I’m about solutions first, over trend and style.”

That philosophy is evident in the visual identity that helps give weight to SIGD within the university’s larger presence.

“I hope the identity conveys the professionalism and rigor of the program. At a large SEC school where sports are so dominant, design is a little bit of an underdog.” Dove said. “The program is so good, and it has prepared me for a very successful career. I want people to know that, and I hope that this identity reflects it.”

In the Fall of 2025, students from both Industrial and Graphic Design programs will participate in a special topics course building on the identity. The students will create their own interpretations of SIGD’s legacy through designs for various materials, including T-shirts, sketchbooks, stickers, animations and posters, which will be featured in a celebration before the end of the year.

This collaboration puts Dove on the other side of the student-mentor relationship from when he was in design school.

“I remember professionals coming in when I was a student here at Auburn and speaking about their design, showing us case studies and so forth. It’s kind of surreal,” he said. “They were examples of what it looked like to take this career to its fruition, and it’s interesting to be on the other end of that.”