2020 has become the year of the global pandemic, an event that is reshaping the way we interact as a community in order to try and protect our own. It has been especially altering to the way we celebrate milestones, such as graduation.
I have been eagerly anticipating June 2020 for about a year now. Needless to say, this is not what I envisioned when I pictured completing my Masters or my commitment to TFA. I could only imagine what first time graduates must be feeling. I was fortunate enough to walk in both my high school and undergraduate graduations and while I am bummed I won't get to mark my new achievements in the same way, I still had my moment.
Con-grate-ulations started with a conversation on a socially distant hike with a good friend of mine. She is completing her Masters in Public Health and is missing her ceremony. She expressed that it was disappointing, especially after not being able to attend her undergraduate commencement. As we talked about this anti-climactic ending to our time spent in higher education, she asked if I would create some cheese pun graduation cards, similar to the style of my Christmas puns. I loved this suggestion and after some brainstorming and bouncing ideas off of my boyfriend, Con-grate-luations was born!
My favorite part of this series was learning about the unconventional, official additional colors of the universities I began to illustrate. Who knew UCLA had hot pink and teal in their marketing color scheme? And Cal Poly Slo had the most aesthetic color swatch page of the bunch I looked at.
It's a small gesture to the Class of 2020. This is not the way any of us could have imagined encapsulating our achievements and maybe we won't fully process the gravity of it all this year. I hope one day, we'll be able to fully celebrate the achievements and milestones we have made, but until then, Congrats Class of 2020! You did it!