RecruitmentSwag &Sticker Design

Problem

College counselors for UChicago and STARS College Network travel constantly — high school visits, college fairs, recruitment events. They had stickers to hand out, but the existing designs were little more than a logo on a die-cut. Students would politely take them and move on. The goal of recruitment swag isn't just brand visibility — it's getting a high schooler to want to put something on their laptop, where their friends will see it every day for the next two years. A logo alone doesn't do that.

Decision

Working alongside a fellow designer, I developed a set of eight sticker designs for UChicago and two for STARS, all hand-illustrated in Procreate. For UChicago, we had full creative freedom and leaned into it — bringing Phil the Phoenix to life as a character alongside other playful campus icons that students with any familiarity with UChicago would immediately recognize and want. The style was deliberately cartoon-like and fun, intentionally separate from the university's formal brand voice. STARS required a more brand-compliant approach given its shorter history and still-developing identity, so those designs balanced personality with consistency. Every piece was designed to be the kind of thing a student picks up and immediately thinks I'm keeping this.

Outcome

The response was overwhelming — students didn't just take the stickers, they took multiples. They showed up on laptops and water bottles at high schools across the country, doing exactly the kind of ambient brand work that a brochure sitting in a recycling bin cannot. For a recruitment program, there's no better outcome than a prospective student voluntarily carrying your name into their daily life.