Star House is a central Ohio based drop-in resource center for young people experiencing homelessness. Their drop-in center provides immediate access to basic necessities and access to therapy, education, health services, legal aid and so much more.
In 2025, Star House worked with King Business Interior's Connecting the Dots program to remodel their art therapy room. As part of the renovation process, a positive affirmation word cloud graphic was removed. The Star House team wanted to replace it with a larger graphic that fit their brand standards and inspired creativity in art therapy programming attendees.
The Design Process:
The team at Star House gave me creative freedom with the design, they provided me with a few positive affirmations they wanted to keep from the original graphic but asked me to come up with a few more if necessary and provided their brand colors. Pulling on my own experiences with art therapy, I created two design directions that referenced free form painting and cut paper collage, two creative techniques utilized frequently in art therapy programs.
After receiving the first mockups, Star House brought the two design direction mockups to their internal stakeholders including: volunteers, staff members, and residents. Based on feedback from the stakeholders, the Star House team decided to move forward with the second design direction and provided me with a new list of affirmations that had been submitted by their residents. Working with the Star House team, I made several more rounds of revisions, including extending the graphics to cover a set of windows that looked into the therapy room to provide more privacy while programming is going on.
The final result is a cheerful and colorful graphic created in conjunction with Star House's stakeholders that meets their updated brand standards and provides the privacy the room was previously lacking.
