I served on the board of the Natchitoches Historic Foundation throughout much of the 2000s. NHF focuses on preservation, education and advocacy of cultural heritage in my hometown of Natchitoches, La.. My work was focused on promotions and design of print and digital assets.
Brochure Newsletter Writing and Design
The newsletter was still in print at that point, and I took it to a process color quadfold, designing it in Adobe Indesign. It conveyed the necessary information in a concise, easy-to-consume manner.
Tradeshow Display conceptualization and design
NHF held numerous events, and was looking to take its message to events by others during that time. I put together the design shown below, which was printed, laminated and adhered with velcro to a trifold tabletop fabric display.
Gala Invite Postcard
This print postcard was used to promote NHF’s biggest fundraiser, the Preservation Gala. It’s a simple black-and-white design accented with fall colors. The design and typography echos the look and feel of the membership newsletter.
Sacred Places Tour Poster
One of NHF’s most popular events was the annual tour of American Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in the state. Community members would tell the stories of those interred while dressed in period costume. In 2006, the tour was renamed the Sacred Places Tour and expanded to churches and other sacred sites of historical significance. NHF hired a professional photographer to capture representative scenes from these places and I designed the 16×20″ posters below, which were used to promote the event.
The recovered archive makes clearer that the tour sat inside a larger preservation partnership around the cemetery. From 2001–03, the American Cemetery Association, Cane River National Heritage Area, Northwestern State University’s Cultural Resources Office, the City of Natchitoches, and NCPTT were all contributing pieces—funding, surveys, archaeological investigation, marker documentation, mapping, conservation planning, landscaping, fencing, fragment cataloging, and training. By 2005, my NHF work was helping turn that technical and preservation activity into a public-facing layer through brochure and poster design, press materials, a web media kit, and promotion of the living-history tour.
Website
It was NHF’s website where I first cut my teeth on WordPress. As in, I developed the site as seen below and then exploded it and had to start over. It was developed with an early StudioPress theme.
Project Catalog Card
View the communications practice, role & surviving artifacts
| Project / body of work | Natchitoches Historic Foundation communications and design |
|---|---|
| Period | Much of the 2000s |
| Role | Board member focused on promotion and the design of print and digital communications. |
| Problem | How could a small local preservation nonprofit make its advocacy, education, events, and membership work more visible and coherent? |
| Practice | Newsletter design, event collateral, trade-show materials, posters, postcards, and an early WordPress website. |
| What happened | The work created a more consistent public-facing identity while also providing an early laboratory for web publishing and digital communications. |
| What survives | Embedded brochures, newsletters, event collateral, and a screenshot of the early website. |
| Trajectory | Local preservation communications → WordPress and digital publishing → later systems thinking about community knowledge and institutional visibility. |
| Status | Historical portfolio record; Foundation remains active. |
Supporting Documents & Sources
View the organization, place context & surviving portfolio artifacts
- Natchitoches Historic Foundation — current organization.
- National Park Service: Natchitoches — place context.
- The embedded newsletter, brochure, trade-show display, gala postcard, Sacred Places poster, and website screenshot above are the surviving project artifacts retained on this page.
Archive Note / Provenance
View what changed & why these artifacts matter now
The Foundation remains active, but the tools around this work changed substantially. The website shown here was my first serious WordPress build—complete with the useful experience of breaking it and rebuilding it—and sits at an early point in a longer shift from designing individual communications products toward thinking about systems that connect organizations, communities, and cultural knowledge.
The print pieces are period artifacts. The larger lesson was learning how a small local preservation organization could use consistent design and emerging web tools to make its work more visible and coherent without losing the specificity of place.
Critical Questions + Add to the Record
- Who gets to speak, and whose knowledge is heard?
- How do we make knowledge more accessible without losing its meaning?
- How do we preserve memory when the systems carrying it keep changing?
Application here: the work asks how a small community preservation organization can make local knowledge, advocacy, and events visible through changing media without flattening the place or the people carrying its memory.
Were you involved with the Natchitoches Historic Foundation during this period, or do you have surviving newsletters, event materials, photographs, or website captures? Add them to the record.
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