To be congratulated: Megan Johnson, Web Design Certificate student, is the winner of the Joyful Heart Foundation competition!

The inside and outside of Megan Johnson's winning trifold brochure design.

Joyful Heart Foundation was founded by Mariska Hargitay, star of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, with the mission of reaching out to victims of sexual assault. The challenge was to design a brochure that emphasized the positive, uplifting message and mission of Joyful Heart Foundation while also conveying the seriousness and importance of it. As the client put it, "we have to make sure it doesn't just look like a travel brochure!" Megan's design and use of type was clean and sophisticated but not too slick or corporate; her color and composition choices helped emphasize the connection with nature, creativitiy ,and healing.

	Megan's before (left) and after (right): she got rid of some images to simplify the cover and make room for type treatment on the back.

In the first version of her design, Megan had a more image-heavy design. Mariska and Stacey gave a thorough critique of each panel and asked her to simplify it, moving some images from the cover, taking out some nonessential images, and adding a type treatment on the words "courage, fearlessness, awakening, possibility" that clearly show that the JHF program is a retreat with a healing purpose. Needless to say, the folks at Joyful Heart Foundation were thrilled with the result and will be distributing the brochure at a big event this week in Los Angeles. Megan's final step was to add her designer credit and portfolio url, so that when people want to see more of her work, they'll know where to look!