You know it’s a new semester at Sacramento State when the signs go up. Greek organizations flood the quad with kiosks vying for your attention. Groups pave over campus walkways with notices composed in pastel chalk. Thousands of flyers compete with each other, affixed to bulletin boards, imploring student participation in various university functions.

One set of advertisements stands out, however: Elegantly conceived banners and signs promote the upcoming CSUS appearance of the “Helobung Cultural Troupe” music and dance company. The ads thoughtfully arrange the color and ethnic themes of the event, striking even the most jaded, promotions-fatigued passersby with a jolt of curiosity. The ads’ edgy design seems light years ahead of that on other notices posted around campus.

The handsome advertisements are the handiwork of the University Union’s award-winning graphic design studio, which collaborates with Sac State’s Union Network for Innovative Quality University Entertainment (UNIQUE) to promote Union-sponsored events.

From banners to posters, from lobby displays to old-fashioned flyers, a small crew of talented artists strives to harness an event’s particular visual appeal. The resulting artwork is some of the most sophisticated and imaginative anywhere at Sac State.”We do our own marketing stuff for our own programs,” says Union program adviser Bill Olmsted, who runs the Union’s design office. “It all starts here and ends here, as opposed to funneling through the various other channels that most other people on this campus have to go through.”

After UNIQUE begins planning an event, details are forwarded to Olmsted, the Union program adviser. A faculty member in the Sac State design department, Olmsted also serves as a mentor to design interns who seek real-life work experience with the Union design studio. Olmsted works with his interns and a full-time designer to organize a special look to promote UNIQUE events around campus.

Among the projects that emerge from the Union studio are posters, banners and life-sized displays that share a special look or theme associated with those events. The colorful “Helobung Cultural Troupe” ads demonstrate such consideration, as do the ever-popular images associated with on-campus film promotions. Some artwork is so well-received that students request extras, and even more signs have been known to disappear from the 92 posting areas around campus.

Union graphic designer Gordon Tsuji recalls the popularity of the posters that promoted last year’s showing of the film “XXX.”

“I spent the time to make sure the quality was going to be the best,” Tsuji says. “Within three or four days, something like two or three dozen (signs) were stolen.”

“That’s not a big deal,” Olmsted says. “Actually, it’s really flattering. We know that if we put something out and we lose 10 or 12 overnight, people are paying attention.”

Not every event is as appealing as an action film, however, and that’s where Olmstead and his crew have been known to work a few miracles.

“I gotta say,” he laughs, shaking his head, “We get some of the worst promotional materials ever. You’d think that when you pay somebody to come in and give a lecture, they would maybe have a black and white glossy to give you.

“But they don’t–they have some bio that’s been Xeroxed like thirty times and is almost completely illegible.”

So, Olmsted says, he and his staff often find themselves having to improvise. Olmsted and Tsuji show off an example of what Olmsted calls “making something out of nothing”: A 5-foot-wide display advertising author Jonathan Kozol’s Sac State speaking appearance last October.

The display shows a three-dimensional cutout of Kozol, his picture blurred almost beyond recognition, mounted against a bright blue backdrop and a lamppost with a “children crossing” sign–a tie-in to Kozol’s advocacy of children’s rights.

The display was fashioned from a photograph in Kozol’s press kit, which Tsuji took great pains to manipulate for greater effect.

“I try and look at everything from the designer’s perspective and the student’s perspective,” Tsuji says. “For something like this, where this guy might be really bland and dry, and his appearance looks bland and dry, I try to pump it up a notch and make it more pop with something that’s a little trendier.”

“We always set the bar a little higher,” Olmsted adds. “Someone comes up with what seems like a crazy idea, and then everybody seems to jump on board with it. Then we just kick it back and forth to find ways to make it work.”

That approach has resulted in several awards for the Union studio, including commendations from both regional and national organizations of university unions.

Even the Union’s 2001 “holiday card”–which is distributed to clubs and individuals on and off campus who have used the Union facilities in the past–won a national design award for Olmsted and his assistants.

Tsuji, who graduated from Sac State last December, has already earned a full-time position at the design studio through his work there as an intern.

Other recent Sac State graduates who interned with Olmsted have also quickly established rewarding design careers outside the university.

“I would very much recommend (design students) to work at the Union as graphic design interns,” says John Weston, 27, who interned with Olmsted before graduating, and has since moved on to design UC Davis Extension’s Distance Education Group Web sites.

“The experience at the Union very much prepared me for the daily grind of working in a fast-paced and creatively demanding environment,” Weston says.

UNIQUE program director Dean Sorenson, a fearless promoter himself, is quick to praise his colleagues in the design office.

“Their publicity materials are amazing,” Sorensen says. “They’re graphic designers, and I’m just the guy who wants butts in the seats. But by and large, we’re all in the same mindset. We have fun with it.”