Liz Liang's designs promoting buzz will be seen throughout the campus.

Durham, NC - Four striking designs that promote Duke's new student calendar came to life over several afternoons as Duke sophomore Liz Liang searched for an image to convey the concepts of excitement and communication that gave the calendar its name: buzz.

Working in the Bryan Center office of the Duke Innovative Design Agency (DiDA), Liang began imagining how she might adapt the buzz logo into an image her fellow students could relate to: a chat box.

"I wanted to keep the design simple and fun and modern," she said. "The chat boxes came about as a result of the word itself. I felt that 'buzz' conveyed the image that everyone was talking about it. There was an air of mystery to it. Putting the chat boxes in different colors represented different people coming together to talk about the calendar."

The idea worked. The Duke team developing buzz adopted Liang's colorful designs to promote the new student calendar on a Bryan Center wall banner and in campus buses during January and February. The calendar launched on Jan. 7.

The team recruited Liang through Valerie Schwartz, who heads DiDA, a student-staffed marketing and design center sponsored by Student Affairs. Schwartz gave the high-profile assignment to Liang because of her high-quality work on previous projects.

"The ad campaign for the student calendar required a lot of different elements that had to work together," Liang said. "It was nice to be able to design something that would be used for more than just a week or a month, and that would touch a large portion of the campus."

An aspiring pediatrician from Bellevue, Wash., Liang has worked as a freelance web designer since 2004. She says graphic design helps her relieve stress but also teaches skills one can apply to different career paths. "Whether I'll be working with design clients or medical patients, graphic design teaches me that form should complement function. You should always keep in mind the people who will be using what you produce."

She was among several Duke students helping to promote the new calendar, which student leaders and campus officials developed over the past several months as a one-stop source of event information for Duke students.

Sophomore Brian Pike, for instance, suggested promoting buzz on the sleeves used for coffee and other hot beverages sold on campus. His idea led to 7,800 coffee cup sleeves being printed with the buzz logo, for distribution at select Duke dining facilities.