Objective

Gunston, a coeducational high school located along the Corsica River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, has a stunning 32-acre waterfront campus and picturesque setting for its 181-member student body. Gunston’s challenge is that it is not located near a large metropolitan area. It draws students from small towns across rural Maryland and Delaware along with some international admissions.

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Approach

We held a series of meetings with school administrators to determine their needs. The school’s riparian campus and updated buildings made it a showcase for potential students. The problem was convincing families that the school was worth not only the extra cost above a public school education but also worth driving the extra distance.

Working with a limited budget, our creative team proposed using a poster instead of the traditional view book format to tell the school’s story. When folded, the poster looks like a large-scale brochure. Its cover and eight panels show different aspects of school life. When fully opened, the poster reveals a panoramic aerial shot of the waterfront campus, something that sets it apart from every other secondary school in the Mid-Atlantic. We turned the potential negative of an isolated location into a selling point by opening with the line, “Gunston, Far From Ordinary,” on the cover. From there, the view book/poster tells the story of a school that offers a superior individualized education in harmony with its beautiful environment, an institution that carries on unique traditions, such as the surprise arrival of the yearbook each year (once by parachute) and the arrival of incoming freshmen and departure of graduating seniors by boat each fall and spring.

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Results

The Gunston School parlayed its unique setting and traditions into a story that sets it apart from other schools, giving prospective families compelling reasons to consider it for their students.

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