2020 California Census

In my entire career, the 2020 Census was the most challenging and rewarding project I have ever worked on. This statewide campaign was a massive undertaking, including printed materials, out of home media buys, television commercials, social media, and more. All of these elements were not only distributed in English, but also in 14 other languages, targeting hard-to-reach communities that in the past may have been averse to taking the Census due to concerns of immigration or other reasons. Needless to say, there was a lot riding on engaging these communities, with billions in potential federal funding on the line.

As the senior designer and production designer on this campaign, my job was busy to say the least. Not only was I connecting creative under the creative direction of Matt Rallens at Lunia Blue, I was building out every piece of creative in all 14 languages, and sometimes in multiple file formats that could either be professionally printed, or printed on smaller scale printers by community organizers. All of these materials also had to be ADA compliant.

In March of 2020, a wrench was thrown in the spokes of the campaign in the form of COVID19 and a state-wide shut down. Working from home the campaign remained nimble and adapted to the new environment in which we found ourselves.

Flash forward to July 2020, the Census had been completed, but our job was not finished. Our task now was to create the massive final report, documenting in detail every step of the campaign for the governor, state senators, and anyone else with a stake in the game.

Over the course of 3 months, we developed in painstaking detail a 1000+ page report and companion executive summary that included every single piece of collateral, metrics on engagement, mis/disinformation statistics, budget, and much, much more.