Goshen College is serious about peace. This Mennonite college’s foreign study service term has been a model for decades and their commitment to pacifism extends to nearly every aspect of campus life. But despite their long tradition and reputation as peacemakers, Goshen’s challenge remained how to present that commitment online in a meaningful way that would get people to participate—inside and outside the college community, Mennonite and non-Mennonite.

The solution was two-fold. First, Goshen’s website was redeveloped to capture the four-color look and feel of the college’s recent rebranding and recruitment campaigns. Leading a team of developers, photographers, and copywriters—and building on the campaign message, “Healing the World, Peace by Peace”—I lead a redesign effort that used rich media to emphasize peacemaking efforts throughout, however big or small. We also reached out into social media, reinforcing existing social channels and bringing them all into a central hub on the college home page. Thus, the dialogue that started in print moved online.

Second, that dialogue was given its own online vehicle. With the launch of PeaceByPeace.com—a Higher-Ed Marketing silver medalist for new media—Goshen College created a forum where users could demonstrate their commitment to peace. Weekly peace heroes served as exemplars and inspiration while the website encouraged users to participate in various ways: to speak their peace in text, images, and video; to spread peace through free, wearable, topical patches and to capture pictures of these patches in the wild; and to visualize peace—either in new ways or in reimaginings of existing symbols.

JD Jordan, experience designer

Kelly Rusk, copywriter

Bo Uzzle, designer

Mindpower is a full-service marketing and branding agency that specializes in bringing brands and campaigns powerfully to life. We're women owned, Atlanta based, and nationally recognized. At our core, we’re storytellers and experience creators.