2025 Day of Design Poster

Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) celebrated the 5th annual Day of Design—focused on fabrication—in fall 2025. This year’s identity explored fabrication in all its forms across six of the college’s disciplines: architecture, environmental design, graphic design, industrial design, interior architecture and landscape architecture. While some fields in CADC fabricate physically, others practice forms of making rooted in assembly, craft, iteration and translation. The visual system sought to honor both the tangible and the intangible—where shaping material meets shaping ideas. The poster comprised three layers of translucent vellum, inviting viewers to physically experience the act of building. The bottom layer featured the word FABRICATION cut in white vinyl and hand-transferred in a precise composition, grounding the piece in material craft. The middle layer introduced a network of “webbing”—an abstract representation of cognitive and creative connection: the leap from idea to artifact, one concept sparking the next, the energetic circuitry of discovery and design. The top layer carried the event’s information, printed over a subtle grid referencing systems used across design disciplines. A clean sans serif typeface—with rounded interior moments inspired by CNC routing paths—created a quiet nod to digital-to-physical fabrication methods. Together, the layers revealed fabrication not just as a process of construction, but as a way of thinking, connecting and making meaning. Wherever possible, the poster was installed on windows, allowing natural light to pass through the vellum and interact with the layers of the design—creating a backlit effect by day and shifting in character at sunrise, sunset and after dark.

From the original award submission.