Memory Anchor Map Uses for Alumni Affairs & Advancement

Illustrated maps that connect alumni to the places they remember — designed for reunion gifts, donor recognition, and institutional storytelling.

Your alumni don't just remember their campus — they feel it. The path to the library at during exam week. The quad in October. The classroom where they changed their mind about what they wanted to do with their life.

Memory Anchor Map creates custom watercolor illustrations of college and university campuses, made for alumni affairs offices, advancement teams, and institutional communications departments that want to move beyond generic photography and into something alumni will actually keep.

What institutions use these maps for

Reunion weekends and milestone reunions

A custom campus map makes a meaningful, lasting gift for 25th and 50th reunion classes — something alumni frame rather than file away. It's also a conversation piece that brings a room back to a shared time and place.

Major gift donor recognition

When a significant gift deserves more than a plaque, a hand-illustrated map of the campus — delivered alongside a personalized note — creates a tangible expression of what the donor's investment protects. 

Bookstore merchandise and campus store retail

Campus maps make strong retail items — they appeal to current students, families on move-in day, and alumni returning for homecoming. Prints, totes, ornaments, stickers and magnets and more have been sold through Barnes & Noble Campus stores and are ready for independent college bookstores.

Annual fund and capital campaign materials

A distinctive illustration sets campaign communications apart from standard institutional photography. The watercolor medium reads as thoughtful and human — which matters when you're asking for a gift.

Sesquicentennial and anniversary programming

For milestone years, a custom campus map becomes an institutional keepsake — something that marks the anniversary with permanence and visual distinction.

Built on the psychology of place memory

Most campus maps are information systems — here's where things are. These maps are something different.

The design philosophy behind Memory Anchor Map comes out of my background as a college professor who introduces students to the broad field of psychology. I've spent years thinking about how places live in memory — how a view, a smell, a particular quality of light can unlock an entire chapter of a person's life.

Every map is composed to show buildings at eye level, the way a student experiences them, not from above. The eye moves through the illustration the way a person moves through campus — past the things they passed every day, stopping at the spaces that mattered. Details are chosen for resonance across a broad audience of campus constituents.

Watercolor suits this work because memory is approximate. The impressionistic quality of the medium mirrors the way we actually hold places in mind — vivid in feeling, loose at the edges.

The result is an illustration that alumni recognize as theirs, not as a generic picture of a college campus.

Recent commissions

Custom campus maps have been completed for Carleton College, McDaniel College, and St. Olaf College. Each map was developed in close collaboration with the institution's communications or alumni affairs team to ensure that the details — which buildings, which views, which landmarks — reflect the campus as alumni actually remember it.

How a commission works

Every map begins with a conversation about your institution's goals — what the map is for, who the audience is, and what it needs to do. From there:

• We identify which buildings, spaces, and traditions will appear, with input from your team on what resonates with your alumni community. I research the campus closely before sketching begins.
• A digital sketch goes to your team for review before any paint is applied. You have a clear picture of the composition before we proceed.
• Deliverables for the final product depend on your needs. You can purchase merchandise for gifts or to feature in your bookstore, license the artwork for an in-house project, combine these options, or do a full buy-out. 

Timeline and pricing vary by scope. 

Ready to talk about your campus?

Whether you have a specific project in mind or are early in the thinking, I'm glad to hear about it. Click the button below for more details and to tell me a little about your institution and what you're considering, and I'll follow up personally.