One of my primaries focuses when joining the design team at Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington was to strengthen our bond with the mission team. I believe that everyone is familiar with Goodwill's retail thrift stores, but few know what shopping at our thrift stores means.

Evergreen Goodwill is driven by digital equity and closing the digital divide. When I found out that our company had partnered with Comcast to bring their Lift Zone mission to our headquarters, I offered up my design services to make it amazing.

As part of their ongoing commitment to help connect low-income families to the Internet so they can fully participate in educational opportunities and the digital economy, Comcast launched a new effort to create more than 1,000 WiFi-connected “Lift Zones” in community centers nationwide.

Lift Zones are designed to complement our Internet Essentials program and help those students who, for a variety of reasons (including homelessness, or housing insecurity issues), are simply unable to participate in distance learning at home. This gives them another way to get online.

Comcast provided financial aid for us to upgrade our technology-based classrooms with the latest in high-end communications and internet, which we offered free to the public. I offered my creative services to design signage and wall art that worked both with Comcast's branding and Evergreen Goodwill's.

In doing so, I thought the best option would be to create a design that feels more like wallpaper. Since the walls are in a classroom meant to help others learn, I wanted the designs to be contemporary and simple to not be distracting. I offered up three options utilizing a neutral gray color scheme with pops of yellow. The yellow color is the primary color for Comcast's Lift Zone, but also happened to be similar to one of Evergreen Goodwill's secondary brand color. I convinced Comcast to adjust their yellow to ours so the brands could match:

Within Comcast's branding, the Lift Zone uses arrowheads pointing upwards to represent "lifting up". I took this concept and used it as a pattern, but also used it as a means to point people in the direction of the Lift Zone when they get off the elevator lobby.

In the end, Comcast picked the Option 2 and loved it so much that they requested to have the artwork to update all of their other Lift Zones with other companies nationwide. Of course, I was honored and we agreed to let them have the design. As of now, Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington houses two Comcast Lift Zones utilizing my branding: one located at their Job Training and Education Center (JTE) in Seattle, Wa, and the other in their JTE in Bellingham, Wa.

To find out more about Comcast Lift, please visit their website. You can also watch this video below presented by Evergreen Goodwill and Comcast: