The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a small, semi-autonomous nonprofit organization within Cornell University. It provides free access to legal information to over 30 million people annually through a university-hosted website (law.cornell.edu) and focuses on making the law more accessible through technology. We were tasked with designing a comprehensive brand identity for the LII, aimed at aligning the organization’s brand with future goals, audience needs, and its relationship with Cornell.

After first extensively researching and workshopping our branding strategy, we developed a new design system to define the LII brand across its various platforms. Incorporating the brand’s existing bracket logo—built around the square typographical brackets used to insert explanatory or citational material in legal reports—we created a new logo and visual language to represent LII’s reliability and accessibility as an informative source, conveying the organization’s commitment to legal information for all.

In this comprehensive branding and website project for returning client Cornell University, KUDOS successfully leveraged our past collaborative experience with Cornell AAP and Cornell Tech to develop and implement design and communication strategies to reach current students and faculty at the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement.

To ensure our website’s new visual identity sat clearly under the larger umbrella of the Cornell brand, we first conducted an extensive design discovery and strategic consultation process. We then created a visually appealing and cohesive visual identity and website, along with UX/UI design for an enhanced user experience and WordPress development for easy maintenance. We executed the content-entry and migration process seamlessly and provided ongoing support as needed, ensuring that the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement’s website provided a fully integrated, user-friendly, and highly engaging resource across platforms.

View einhorn.cornell.edu

Cornell AAP is, a world-renowned college offering a triple focus of studies in architecture, fine arts, and regional planning. We’ve been producing printed communications for the college since 2011.

For this project, we produced bespoke magazines for the college. Each issue featured a spot color on the cover and table of contents, which was echoed in various highlight spots inside. The short cover reveals the table of contents on one side, inviting readers to open the magazine and explore the articles inside.

The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech is a place for dynamic experimentation, where the boundaries of academia are expanded to integrate technology, business, law, and design in service of economic impact and greater societal good.

We were tasked with designing a keepsake book and construction-fence display for the inauguration of the Institute’s campus in September 2017. The book’s cover features a T-shaped die cut revealing details of the Bloomberg Center, one of the campus’s architecture highlights. A gatefold map of Roosevelt Island highlights future plans for the campus’s development. For the campus opening, we designed a 632-foot fence covering an ongoing construction site, with materials identifying the architect behind the building under construction.

In 2022, Isometric rolled out a wide-ranging new visual identity and website design for the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the museum, the new design celebrates its architecture by I.M. Pei, abstracting its iconic ribbon window into a simple, dashed line motif to signify the view from the museum onto the picturesque landscape of Ithaca and its role in interpreting the world beyond. KUDOS was tasked with developing the website, created in close collaboration with the museum and Isometric’s design team. 

The resulting site is a transformative online platform that gives visitors unprecedented access to the Johnson’s astounding collection of 40,000 works that span six millenia and most world cultures. Beyond serving as a crucial archive, the website also acts as a dynamic educational platform, offering a variety of activities for children via the Johnson Kids portal, and an opportunity through the Community Exhibition Creator for visitors to create their own online exhibitions incorporating artworks from the museum’s collection. Through these functions, visitors are empowered to engage with the collection on their own terms, creating an egalitarian and inclusive experience of the museum.

View museum.cornell.edu

Cornell AAP is a world-renowned college offering a triple focus of studies in architecture, fine arts, and regional planning. We’ve been producing printed communications for the college since 2011.

For this event’s poster, we were tasked by the Department of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University to experiment with new ways of presenting its array of distinguished speakers. We concluded with a concept that blends an origami folding pattern with color planes that challenge viewers’ sense of depth. Smaller posters were also distributed on campus to promote individual departmental events.

Cornell University’s new Department of Design Tech is a multi-college, transdisciplinary initiative pioneering innovation, research, and teaching on those topics at the intersection of design and emerging technology that most greatly impact research, industry, and practice in an ever-evolving world.

The five-panel pamphlet we designed for the Department of Design Tech serves as a captivating gateway into the innovative world of design and emerging technology. With a bold “Des Tec” letterform adorning the front cover, the brochure invites viewers to explore further, unveiling the full “design tech” message as they delve deeper into its contents. Curated images, serving as full-blown backgrounds, seamlessly merge with the technological narrative, showcasing the department’s commitment to innovation, research, and education. Integrated red lines weave subtly throughout the pamphlet, harmonizing the college’s existing branding with the pamphlet’s fresh and contemporary aesthetic.

To celebrate the opening of Milstein Hall at Cornell University, we developed a look-and-feel for the event collateral. 

We developed our stencil-bar logotype based on the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows. We also produced a series of printed materials for the opening event, from postcards and brochures to invitations and wayfinding posters.