College Admissions Publications
About
In 2007, Vassar College had a problem with its admissions publications. Designed by Nesnadny & Schwartz, an award-winning design firm, and written by Julia Van Develder, the college’s viewbook had been extremely successful. Applications were up, admits were up, and every succeeding incoming class was the most academically competitive in the college’s history. So what was the problem?
The Be book (as students referred to it) had an extraordinarily long and productive life—seven years, much longer than expected. But it was time for a change. The challenge was to create a new set of publications that maintained visual ties to the previous set but also addressed the changing realities of our target audience: academically talented, tech-savvy, social networking seventeen-year-olds.
Let’s face it--we’re living in the Late Age of Print. Within the foreseeable future, college viewbooks will disappear. But for now, they still serve an important function. Limitless Possibilities, the college’s new viewbook, is a bridge to the future. Shorter texts, multiple points of entry, visual and textual allusions to the online experience, and a seamless connection to Vassar’s new admissions website.