Seek & Discover

2024 End-of-Year Message

Department Responsible: University Communications

Collaborators: Mario Zucca (Illustrator)

Goal: In partnership with the President’s office, University Communications strives to deliver unique end-of-year messages. We strive to go beyond traditional messages to actively engage our community (students, faculty, staff, donors, and alumni) to say, “Thank you for your contributions to JHU this year and keep it up!” 

Concept: For 2024, we decided to celebrate the spirit of discovery that established Johns Hopkins as America’s first research university just under 150 years ago. Working with award-winning illustrator, Mario Zucca, we commissioned a seek-and-find illustration, inspired by the popular I Spy and Where’s Waldo books, to anchor our end-of-year message of thanks from the university president.

“Discover Hopkins,” our custom seek-and-find, visually represents Johns Hopkins University, from our many locations in Baltimore, MD to our newest convening center in Washington, D.C., and the accomplishments and personalities of our community members across ten schools and divisions. There are five objects to search for, including an ice-skating University President, Ron Daniels, and his beloved Boston Terrier, Barney.

Deliverables: In addition to a traditional print-out, a custom microsite was developed to bring the static illustration to life with interactive features, provide additional context for the findable objects, and add extra layers of gameplay for those looking to extend the fun.  

Outcome: For the distribution of “Discover Hopkins,” we saw high engagement rates and sustained traffic to the microsite. We had an email open rate of 32.19%, resulting in 23,475 unique opens and 2,397 clicks. Social media, particularly Instagram, had a strong showing with 1456 likes, 20 comments, and 54 saves.