NYU Student Affairs
2024-25 Year-in-Review
In the 2024-25 academic year at NYU, the Athletics and Recreation division celebrated a second historical women’s basketball win at the NCAA, the Student Wellbeing office facilitated a 124% increase in HPV vaccinations, and the Career Development and Jobs center hosted career fairs and events gathering 30,000+ attendees.
These accomplishments represent just a portion of the impact made by seven Student Affairs offices and 600+ staff members supporting 60,000+ students. To showcase this collective effort, I designed the Student Affairs Year-in-Review as a visual narrative, seamlessly blending data and storytelling to highlight the division’s influence on student success and well-being at NYU.
Core Responsibilities
Content Collection
Coordinated with staff via email to gather content, organizing writing, data, and imagery in Google Drive for easy access.
Design and Editing
Created a cohesive booklet design using data, imagery, and text, with a focus on readability and engagement.
Document Accessibility
Implemented accessibility best practices to ensure essential content is accessible for users with screen-readers.
Publication and Distribution
Published the accessible report online for a division-wide e-blast and coordinated with printers to distribute physical copies.
Content Collection
Executed the content collection process across all seven units, ensuring seamless collaboration and high-quality contributions. Key actions included:
Organizing Google Drive content: structured folders for text, visual, and data-based submissions.
Directing content creation: crafted questions to guide writing, photo, and data curation.
Managing deadlines and coordination: kept contributors on track for timely, quality submissions.
Sample Guidance Questions for Year-in-Review
Key Achievements: Provide 2-3 standout achievements from 2024-25.
By the Numbers: List 3-5 key data points that reflect your unit’s performance or impact.
Student Collaboration & Impact:
Choose one:
Student Collaborations: Highlight a project or partnership with a student or student organization.
Student Impact: Describe resources or services your unit provided that supported student growth and success.
Optional:
Additional Achievements/Insights: Describe accomplishments or details not covered above.
The Design Process
DNA-Inspired Poster Design
Developed the concept that flourishing is encoded in the DNA of NYU students and brought it to life in this poster. By leveraging NYU’s brand colors, the design reinforced the message and served as a visual cornerstone for marketing campaigns, shaping the Year-in-Review booklet and creating a cohesive narrative across all materials.
From Poster to Booklet
The ribbon on the Year-in-Review cover symbolizes the ongoing journey of student flourishing at NYU and beyond, its twisting form echoing a DNA spiral. Its iridescent colors reflect the diversity of students’ talents and perspectives while visually linking to the poster’s DNA strand, reinforcing identity and connection across campaign materials.
Accessibility Design
With guidance from the Digital Accessibility team at NYU, I created an accessible PDF of the Year-in-Review on Adobe InDesign, in compliance with WCAG and ADA standards, for audiences with visual impairments. This stage of the design process ensured inclusive, accessible access to essential content.
The following elements were key to passing the accessibility test:
Layers: Organized design elements into layers for a smoother workflow, managing essential content before tagging.
Articles: Arranged essential text, data, and images in the correct reading order, marking decorative elements, like icons and shapes, as artifacts.
Paragraph Styles: Applied consistent heading and paragraph styles so screen readers could recognize hierarchy and allow easier navigation.
Color Contrast: Ensured strong contrast between text and background to improve readability for users with low vision or color vision differences.
Alt Text: Wrote concise descriptions for essential images so readers with visual impairments could imagine what is being shown through their screen readers.
The Completed Booklet
Print and Distribution
Print Booklet
We printed physical copies of the Year-in-Review with the help of a third-party printer to share with 300 attendees at the annual fall convening. The event, held in the gym at the recently renovated John A. Paulson Center, featured screens displaying photos and highlights from the past year.
Staff browsed the booklet as unit leaders presented their accomplishments from the 2024-25 academic year. Copies of the booklet and the Flourishing: Inside NYU’s DNA poster were available at the entrance for staff to take, share with colleagues, prospective students, and families, and display in their offices.
Digital Booklet
I created an accessible digital version of the booklet, optimized for screen reader compatibility, to provide an inclusive experience for all users.
The accessible version of the Year-in-Review was shared with University Life staff through The Digest, the division’s monthly e-blast. This digital format allowed staff to easily view, download, and share the publication across the University.
Project Reflections
Challenges
Limited Content: Student Affairs does not have a dedicated photography team. Sourcing images for the annual report required avoiding repeat photos from previous years, adding complexity to selecting visuals that met both aesthetic and production standards.
Accessibility Design: Implemented NYU’s accessibility standards in three weeks using Adobe InDesign and Acrobat. Learning and applying compliance requirements late in the process added pressure; earlier guidance would have allowed the document to be set up for accessibility from the start, streamlining implementation.
Limited Accessibility Technology: To ensure screen reader compatibility, the online PDF could not be published in spreads. It had to be exported as single pages to prevent navigation errors for users relying on assistive technology, which affected the digital flipbook effect originally planned. This requirement reflects the current state of accessible technology rather than a project error, as support for digital spreads is still developing.
Key Takeaways
Full-Project Ownership: Led the design of a 40-page booklet from start to finish — managing content collection, visual design, accessibility, and printing — demonstrating the ability to oversee complex projects independently.
Adaptability: Navigated tight timelines, shifting stakeholder schedules, and evolving accessibility requirements, while adjusting workflows quickly to meet deadlines without compromising quality.
Collaboration and Communication: Coordinated with stakeholders, vendors, and internal teams, solving complex challenges through clear communication and problem-solving.
Resourcefulness: Compensated for low-quality submissions and maximized limited resources by curating images from existing libraries, maintaining visual consistency and storytelling impact.
Accessibility Expertise: Applied NYU’s accessibility standards in Adobe InDesign and Acrobat, producing a screen reader–friendly PDF and ensuring inclusive access for all audiences.
The Previous
Year-in-Review
The 2023-24 Year-in-Review serves as an additional example of my skills and experience in UX storytelling and design strategy.