El Camino College’s Marketing & Communications Team Wins Three Gold Awards
Seven awards honoring outstanding design, video, digital media, print publications and messaging efforts were presented to the college’s Office of Marketing & Communications
El Camino College’s Office of Marketing & Communications recently brought home seven Medallion Awards from the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations (NCMPR) annual regional conference. The awards recognize excellence in branding, video and audio content, and communications. The highest honors – gold awards – highlight El Camino’s work this past year in marketing, digital publications, and design.
One gold award went to El Camino’s Campus Banners Project. Created to celebrate the diversity of El Camino’s student body, more than 200 full-color banners were installed throughout campus, featuring a life-sized student portrait, along with their name and campus affiliation. The banners highlight about 80 outstanding El Camino students and 16 programs/services, emphasizing the college’s commitment to advancing a supportive campus culture by offering a variety of assistance and resources.
The college’s new logo for the MICASA Center was also declared a gold award winner. Designed to unify many groups under one image, the logo represents the goals of the Mexican, Indigenous, Chicano, Caribbean, Central American, and South American Alliance (MICASA) Center, where everyone is welcome, including the largest student group on campus. The logo celebrates the cultural heritage, strength, and sacred knowledge of the Latina/o/x communities, and highlights the lived experiences, histories, and collective resilience of ECC students.
An additional gold medallion was awarded to a series of reports for El Camino’s new Comprehensive Integrated Plan (CIP) in the e-publication category. This large-scale digital project includes a total of seven reports and was designed to support the college’s strategic efforts (planning, decision-making, and resource allocation) from 2024 to 2034. The objective – and challenge – was achieved: to present CIP information in a cohesive format with a clean, modern layout to ensure easy readability and navigation.
A companion CIP video won a silver award. El Camino’s “Comprehensive Integrated Plan: Our 10-Year Roadmap” video is captivating, personalized, and impactful – offering a sneak peek and introduction to the new CIP: a roadmap that shows where the college is headed through the next decade. The video features a wide variety of employees from all areas of the college, who explain why the CIP – and the college’s mission – is important.
The college’s first-ever podcast, ElCo Chats, won a silver award in the audio content category. Designed to inspire, inform, and motivate prospective students to enroll in El Camino, the format features the first-hand experiences of students, faculty, staff, and alumni who have achieved their goals. Episode topics and guests are determined by the offices of Marketing & Communications and Outreach & School Relations. Every story is different, yet each one demonstrates how El Camino changes lives.
A student engagement passport created for the Men of Color Action Network (MOCAN) won bronze in the “print wild card” category. Drawing inspiration from a real passport, the inside pages of this inspired document are filled with uniquely designed “travel stamp” graphics, each representing a different campus resource, such as peer mentoring, counseling, and career services for students to visit. The passport shows progress at a glance and is a tangible record of each student’s hard work.
Another bronze was awarded to a complete redesign of the Community and Continuing Education Catalog, which resulted in a user-friendly, easy-to-read, informational piece that showcases all that Continuing Education has to offer. The timing was just right for this project because the college’s Community Education and Continuing Education departments recently reorganized with a new name and expanded curriculum that includes workshops, short-term courses, events, and career training.
The Medallion Awards are sponsored by NCMPR and are judged by a panel of industry leaders in advertising, public relations, marketing, design, and other related areas. The only organization of its kind that exclusively represents marketing and public relations professionals at community and technical colleges, NCMPR provides professional growth opportunities for those working in marketing and communication at two-year colleges, with a focus on learning, networking and advocacy. NCMPR has more than 1,600 members from nearly 600 colleges across the United States and Canada.