Jax, a Living Canvas
Civic cultural campaign representing Jacksonville through art and place
Jacksonville’s creative culture exists alongside political, cultural, and historical narratives that often dominate how the city is perceived from the outside. This project began with a specific question: how do you represent a place honestly without flattening it, romanticizing it, or reducing it to headlines?
Jax, a Living Canvas was developed as a civic cultural campaign that uses art and public space as the primary language for storytelling. Rather than relying on slogans or promotional messaging, the campaign centers on murals, monuments, architecture, and shared environments as expressions of community identity. These spaces act as visual anchors, offering a more lived-in and human portrait of the city.
The project was shaped through dialogue with international design students, where conversations focused on how art communicates place, memory, and identity across cultures. These discussions helped clarify what needed to be shown rather than explained, reinforcing an approach rooted in specificity, restraint, and respect for complexity.
From the outset, the goal was not to rebrand the city, but to reframe how its creative culture is seen, both by outsiders and by residents who already know the city is more than its reputation.
The Challenge
The challenge was to develop a campaign that could communicate Jacksonville’s creative identity without relying on optimism, branding language, or promotional shortcuts. The work needed to feel grounded and credible, especially given its potential visibility beyond the city itself.
Additional constraints shaped the project. The campaign was developed within a limited timeframe, required coordination across institutions connected through Sister Cities International, and involved uneven team capacity. This placed greater emphasis on clear direction, defined scope, and decisive creative leadership to ensure the work remained cohesive.
The challenge was not to make Jacksonville look better, but to represent it more truthfully, using art and place as the connective tissue.
Role & Leadership
I served as the creative lead for Jax, a Living Canvas, guiding the project from concept through execution. I set the campaign’s narrative direction, visual approach, and overall structure, and made decisions around scope, tone, and creative priorities. I also led research into Jacksonville’s public spaces and cultural markers to determine which locations, stories, and visual motifs would anchor the campaign.
- Campaign concept and creative direction
- Narrative framing and visual strategy
- Brand system and identity design
- Campaign asset system design (print, digital, and environmental)
- Original photography and visual sourcing
- Final presentation and campaign articulation
Campaign Strategy
The strategy for Jax, a Living Canvas was grounded in the idea that a city’s identity is most clearly expressed through its shared spaces. Rather than focusing on individual institutions or personalities, the campaign centered on public art, monuments, architecture, and environments that residents interact with daily.
Research focused on identifying visual anchors that were both specific to Jacksonville and representative of its broader creative culture. Murals, memorials, bridges, and architectural landmarks became the primary storytelling devices, allowing the campaign to communicate place through lived environments rather than promotional messaging. These spaces carried history and community meaning without requiring heavy explanation.
Audience considerations shaped how the work was communicated. The campaign needed to resonate locally while remaining legible to an international audience unfamiliar with the city. This reinforced the decision to prioritize visual storytelling over copy-heavy narratives, allowing imagery to function as a shared language across cultural contexts.
Together, these factors informed a strategy that treated the city itself as the canvas, using art and place to communicate identity in a way that felt honest, accessible, and adaptable.
Execution
Execution centered on producing a set of campaign assets that could stand on their own while functioning as a cohesive system. Posters served as the primary vehicle for storytelling, using public art, infrastructure, and shared civic spaces as the visual language for representing the city.
Additional assets extended the campaign across physical and digital environments without shifting tone or intent. Each piece reinforced the same core idea: a city’s identity is revealed through the places people inhabit. This allowed the campaign to remain flexible while maintaining a clear and consistent voice.
Video production by Johnny Romanov. Motion graphics and titles were designed to align with the campaign’s visual system.
Outcome & Future Direction
Jax, a Living Canvas established a cohesive visual and narrative framework for representing the city through art and place. The campaign demonstrated that civic identity can be communicated without promotional language, using shared spaces and public art as authentic storytellers.
The posters and supporting assets were well received and circulated beyond the initial presentation, generating interest across campus and community spaces. The work functioned both as a complete campaign and as a system capable of extension.
The campaign was intentionally designed as a flexible foundation rather than a closed system. While the initial artifacts define the visual language and narrative direction, the framework allows future creative teams to expand the work across additional formats, stories, and public spaces. In this way, Jax, a Living Canvas is positioned not as a finished statement, but as a living framework capable of evolving alongside the city it represents.