Capstone – Derek Nosbisch Design

Capstone

From Ballots to Booths - Building a better, more sustainable voting experience

Voting is not a rewarding process for several reasons. Historically, the vote was meant only for White land-owning Protestant Men over the age of 30. America has only had a full Democracy since the 1960’s with the passage of the VRA.

For my Capstone Senior Thesis, I developed a new sustainable and rewarding voting system to incentivize lifelong voting. My research for the thesis was in aesthetic theory and political design, which led me to the idea of designing a new voting experience.

I constructed a voting booth from recyclable materials, and printed a collage of iconography of American democracy on the sides to draw attention. Each voting packet contain the ballot, made from recycled paper, with a simplified design to feed into vote counting machines. Also included was a button and unique card to incentivize lifelong voting. The idea being that you would collect them over a lifetime of voting, and that they would retain sentimental value.

Booth Pictures

Design Samples

As part of my overall Capstone project, I’ve helped organize and design the identity of a new campus organization at the University of Nebraska called the Huskers VOTE Coalition. As the only designer working with the group, I’m responsible for the entire brand image, both physical and digital. Voter turnout at the University level for midterm elections is typically abysmal (at UNL it’s around 20 percent). One of the goals of the coalition, and one of my personal goals, was to get voter turnout to over 50 percent. To do so, we created a campaign called “Why I Vote” with social media testimonials accompanied by info-graphics I’ve created.

Logo Design

Non-partisanship was one of my main goals when developing the logomark for the Huskers Vote Coalition. I fused several symbols, including an ear of corn, with a shield mark to create the logo itself, then balanced it with the text.

Aside from the VOTE coalition, I developed a series of social graphics for use on my own personal Instagram for the week leading up to the 2018 midterm elections. These graphics ranged from funny to stark, and were focused on delivering concise information for social media lovers.

After all of the posts ran, I used Hootsuite to track the performance of the posts. The posts about expanding Medicaid in Nebraska performed the best out of all topics. Unsurprisingly, the ballot initiative passed.