Alumnus Designs our New Logo!

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Tyler Zenk didn’t always know he wanted to be a designer, but after taking multimedia classes at Riverton High School with instructor LeAnne Adels, he knew he was on a path to his future.

“She was really inspiring and helped put me on the track of graphic design,” Zenk said.

Zenk enrolled at Central Wyoming College in the fall of 2009 and after taking courses in graphic design, Zenk knew he had made the right decision. Ultimately, it was instructor Matt Flint who pushed Zenk to become a better designer and helped him realize it was something he wanted to pursue as a career.

“I had always known I wanted to do something art related,” Zenk said.

Zenk attended CWC on scholarships and after graduating in May of 2011, Zenk packed his belongings and moved to Nashville.

“I knew I wanted to get out of Wyoming and see what other possibilities there were for me,” Zenk said. “Wyoming is a great place, but I knew there was more for me outside of Wyoming.”

While in Nashville, Zenk attended Watkins College of Art, Design and Film and earned a bachelor’s in graphic design in the fall of 2013.

After graduating, Zenk got a job with redpepper, a company that specializes in integrated campaigns, marketing strategies as well as branding, web design and app design. Zenk is a user interface/user experience (UI/UX) designer for the company. The goal of a UI designer is to make the user’s interaction as simple and efficient as possible and the UX designer defines the user’s experience as a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use of a product, system or service.

Zenk dabbles in a little bit of everything for the company including logos, branding, layout and design for print materials to working with digital space through user flows, wireframing websites and applications, high fidelity UI design and icon design. In his free time, Zenk is a freelance designer and illustrator.

“Currently I’m working on getting together an illustrated graphic novel as a personal project, with motion graphics and animation,” Zenk said. “It’s something new I am learning to do and improve on in my free time.”

Recently Zenk received the opportunity to help his alma mater, CWC, redesign its logo.

Lori Ridgway, director of marketing at Central Wyoming College was on a path to develop a consistent and effective brand strategy.

“We did a great deal of research and found that many academic institutions are simplifying their logos,” Ridgway said, “Not only that but they are also transitioning into marketing teams who are focused on helping brand their colleges.”

The next step was finding someone to design the new logo. Zenk was referred to Ridgway by a faculty member in the graphic arts program, Matt Flint.

“Flint expressed that Zenk was one of the most talented students that he had ever taught,” Ridgway said.

Ridgway tracked Zenk down and found that he was working for a successful design company in Nashville, repepper.

Zenk provided the college with many variations of a logo which was narrowed down to two and a final logo was approved on Feb. 19. The new logo represents the relationship between the campus community and its students and shows student growth, Ridgway stated.

“It was so rewarding to work with one of our graduates,” Ridgway said. “He had a CWC student’s perspective on the way the logo should feel, look and portray our attributes.”