Indiana University

Hi, Indiana University

We’ve hand-picked the following case studies to demonstrate our research and brand practice. We are confident that our doctoral-level researchers, strategists, and creatives are more than capable to tease out the brand attributes that make UI authentically, competitively, and sustainably you.

Ask questions, we're here for it :)

Andrés Zapata (he, him, él)
EVP, STRATEGY + FOUNDER
81 Mosher Street, 3rd floor
Baltimore, Maryland 21217
410.615.7283
andres.zapata@idfive.com
@idfive @iduxwatch

Welcome Indiana University

On this page, you’ll find the case studies we’ve selected especially for you. All of them showcase the talent, passion, and ingenuity we put into everything we do. Reach out if you have any questions!

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Aims Community College

Defining the voice of a community pillar.

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Aims Community College

Refreshing a Community College Brand with Lofty Aims

Aims Community College shatters the common perception of “community college,” with multiple locations and state-of-the-art facilities—including commercial-grade flight simulators, maker spaces, and a new community welcome center, to name a few features. But it lacked a cohesive brand to support its vision as a “first choice” and recognized leader in student success.

The Strategy

With an initial scope of work to analyze the current Aims brand, idfive started in a familiar place: with research, consisting of:

a brand communications audit of Aims’ existing messaging architecture, brand assets, and marketing materials.
comparative analysis of three competing colleges’ brand attributes.
an AudienceScan to determine audience sentiment (actual and desired) using surveys, interviews, and a review of existing research.
a Brand Perception Workshop to engage internal stakeholders to shape brand attributes, platform, and messaging architecture.

The final deliverables included branding, a new tagline, a refreshed mascot, a viewbook, and a brand anthem video.

Branding

After presenting our findings to the president and her cabinet, our scope of work expanded to include developing a revised Aims Brand Guide. With a refreshed brand promise and platform (including supports), a revised logo, and reenergized voice and tone, the College wanted a tagline that could succinctly express the new brand’s position. Working collaboratively with the Aims MarComm team, we launched a research-based initiative to identify a new Aims tagline

— a process that started with brainstorming sessions and ended with surveys and focus groups with major campus stakeholders.

The winner—All In—is best described by our focus group participants: “Catchy, and easy to remember.” “it’s everything we are.” “It’s an allegory and delivers a broader message.” “It’s what the Aims community is.” “Put a stamp on it.”

Aims Red

Aims Black

Aims Slate

Evolution Blue

Corn Husk

Fountain

Design

Arty the Aardvark has come to represent comfort, familiarity, friendship, and kindness. For example, at Arty’s Pantry, students receive free food and basic supplies.

Since Arty isn’t your stereotypical college athletics cheerleader (Aims doesn’t have sports) the redesigned Arty needed to be more than just another pissed off mascot. He needed to be a positive, energetic personification of the institution and community.

Through a highly collaborative and iterative process, Arty emerged—he’s a little bit “dad bod,” a lot “can-do spirit,” and All In.

Viewbook

A refreshed college brand requires a bold, new recruitment publication. We wanted Aims’ new viewbook to connect with prospective students on an emotional level—a critical goal for the admissions team—while also communicating the College’s distinctions with bold visuals and user-focused content. The viewbook was also the first embodiment of the new brand guidelines we had developed for Aims, and aided in expanding on the brand’s look and feel.

To ensure the viewbook is compelling, a unique peek-a-boo cover was designed which opens to an exciting spread explaining what it means to be All In.

Video

For Aims Community College, creating a video that flips the script on who they are and what they offer was a critical next step in rallying a local and national audience of perspective and current students, staff, and the community. After partnering with idfive on an award-winning brand, “All In” tagline, mascot, and marketing materials, Aims possessed a more cohesive and effective messaging platform to articulate the Aims advantage.

With a 90-second montage of students in experiential learning environments at multiple locations and state-of-the-art facilities—including commercial-grade flight simulators, maker spaces, and a new community welcome center, idfive was able to help Aims shatter the common perception of “community college.” Our video production team helped Aims go “All In” and be recognized as a first choice option and leader in higher education.

Walden University

Promoting the human side of online learning.

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Walden University

The Challenge

Walden University is one of the largest online universities in the world with over 50,000 students in over 120 countries. One of Walden’s core strengths has been developing innovative new modalities and evolving their programs to meet contemporary challenges. When they wanted to launch some of their newest, they turned to idfive for creative approaches driven by research.

Research

It’s tempting to think of “adult learners” as a monolithic category, but both we and Walden understood that nothing could be further from the truth. While most adults going back to school do share similar challenges when it comes to balancing learning with the rest of their lives, what drives them very much depends on their profession, their interests, and their ultimate life goals. Unless we knew them, we couldn’t speak to them.

MSEd

So we got to know them, and the knowledge we gained drove each unique campaign. For the relaunch of the MSEd we learned that if we were going to get noticed we had to break away from the very crowded competitive set by being bold, sounding fresh, and ditching the cliches every other program seemed to be using. Our ads featured bold, single-color backgrounds, exuberant, real-looking people who looked nothing like the ho-hum stock photos featured by other schools, and typography that evoked real-life classroom tools such as notebook paper and blackboards.

Woman standing in front of teal background laughing

MSW

In order to reach out to prospective MSW students we had to take a different approach. For these audiences Walden’s long-time emphasis on social change already resonated: our research showed that “change” was the key word when it came to motivating people to go into social work. The imagery of this campaign focused around images of real students and their stories of how their education would empower them to bring real change to their communities. Using a dark, somewhat muted palette for the background along with strong, simple sans-serif type, the effect was to put the student front and center, projecting power and determination.

Doctoral

Prospective students interested in doctoral programs had similar motivations and shared many of the same characteristics as the prospective MSW students. People interested in earning their doctorates, regardless of the discipline, were driven people determined to make real change, something many had experience with through their work with their communities. These were inspiring people and our campaign reached out to them with a story-driven approach featuring accomplished alumni in close-cropped, eyes-forward poses and short, declarative copy about their accomplishments. The effect was like having an intimate conversation with each, one designed to draw in the prospective student and inspire them to action.

Undergraduate Academy

Our research also showed that adult learners who had committed to returning to finish their undergraduate degrees after being out of school for a long time were pretty determined folks, too. They had to be because they often had to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to gain the education that would help them obtain a better life for themselves and their families. We tested two concepts for the new Undergraduate Academy with them: “It’s Your Turn” focusing on empowering their decision and “Think Again,” a phrase which pivoted on the double meanings of both “thinking again” and using education to reconsider their lives. Walden eventually chose “It’s Your Turn” and the campaign imagery focused on simple shots of “everyday” adults in the target demographic boldly filling the frame over an “It’s Your Turn” watermark background, their eyes raised towards the future drawing the viewer to the straightforward, encouraging, empowering headlines.

Celebration Slate

Cool grey

Graduation Gold

Traditional Teal

Tempo

Finally, our campaign to promote Tempo, Walden’s new self-paced modality for undergraduate learners used straight talk and bold statements to make sure that prospects knew “yeah: you got this” when thinking about completing their degrees. Knowing that employers were taking a more active role in educating their employees as a way of increasing workforce effectiveness and employee retention, our campaign addressed the needs of employers as well, speaking directly to them to emphasize that the program would be ideal for improving the effectiveness of their employees and that their financial support or support offered by giving employees time off to complete their degrees with the Tempo program isn’t a cost: it’s an investment in their own business.

Survey responses for Tempo campaign research

Campaign Optimization

Much of Walden’s media buying is handled by another agency employed strictly to handle those transactions, so idfive collaborated with them and our partners at Walden to create a wide range of formats and executions for all five campaigns. We utilized a wide range of channels in most cases, including traditional banner advertising, social media advertising, email, and, in some cases (eg. the Doctoral campaign) even print collateral such as posters.

Wherever possible, a “test, optimize, focus” approach was used, starting with multiple executions of online ads that varied headlines, imagery, and, in some cases, colors — all within brand and campaign standards, of course — which would run in flights on targeted media. Results were analyzed regularly, often on a daily basis in the early stages, and creative that performed the best replaced creative which did not yield optimal results. Using this method, the campaign was quickly optimized around the most effective ads yielding the greatest response rates.

Alumni Magazine

Walden Magazine, published twice a year for an alumni audience, highlights the contributions that Walden graduates make to their communities and the world. The 2021 Summer/Fall issue—with a theme of Finding and Building Community in a Transformative Time—took the community focus to another level. Walden already had an important story to tell: as a leader and early adopter in online education, they maintained a sense of community throughout the challenges of education in the time of Covid. But in early 2021, both of Walden’s founders, Rita and Bernie Turner passed away.

From Confronting Healthcare Disparities in the LGBTQIA+ Community to Stopping the Spread of Covid-19 in the Navajo Nation, the magazine flips from an expected, somber tone to a celebratory one. With a visual focus on what makes Walden special—people—the 2021 Summer/Fall Walden Magazine both engages its audience and honors the University’s founders in equal measure.

University of Hartford

Banding together under a bold umbrella.

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University of Hartford

Designing the Cross-Platform Launch of a University's Bold Strategic Vision

The University of Hartford created their UHart Start Strategic Action Plan as a guiding light for the next five years, then they partnered with idfive to turn their action plan into a rallying cry that would generate excitement and share their vision with stakeholders and the community.

The Strategy

After analyzing UHart’s strategic plan, idfive got to work by reorganizing the plan’s contents to lead with a shared vision in its realized state, and then use goals and objectives as proof points, creating a compelling narrative for the next five years and beyond. We also reformatted the action plan into a glossy, full-color 20-page booklet that puts the University’s future in the actual hands of key stakeholders, as well as a bi-fold mailer summarizing the plan for additional audiences. Finally, we built a robust and engaging landing page hosted on the main site that detailed UHart Start’s story while granting full transparency into the plan’s details and responsibilities.

Print Collateral

It’s nice to have a plan, but policy and strategic documentation can often look and feel sterile and calculating. Our job for UHart was to make it fun, dynamic, and useful. We started by remixing the UHart Start plan into a 20-page booklet. Leading with a bold visual representation of the UHart community’s vision, the spread showcases each goal with flair. The result is a tangible representation of UHart’s promise.

For those in the extended UHart network who are curious but not directly involved in the strategic action plan, the mailbox still offered an opportunity to showcase the vision for their beloved institution in a way that still feels real. The mailer succinctly summarizes the plan with a call to participate and engage. But even more importantly, it delivers a physical reminder of the benefits of buy-in to a donor base that rose to the occasion with a 30% increase in unrestricted donations during 2020.

Landing page

UHart’s vibrant brand color palette and pattern library beckon users to dig into strategic action and find out how to engage in key initiatives. The website rewards curiosity and exploration by progressively disclosing information to increasingly specific user questions. Along the way, custom module designs keep things visually interesting as users progress from passing interest to downloading the fully ratified policy document.

The Result

Getting people excited and engaged with a strategic plan with just policy and strategic documentation can be herculean. Using the sum of its parts and remixing it into something exciting, compelling, and full of enthusiasm is how we did it.

Since deploying the landing page, the average time-spent-on-page was around 2:28, showcasing a higher-than-average engagement rate, rather than the average of 0:52.

2:28

Landing page engagement rate

Evergreen Health

Welcome to the new Evergreen Health

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Evergreen Health

How to build greater awareness and affinity among Maryland residents and brokers?

Evergreen Health was a Maryland based health insurance provider, established in 2012 as a result of the Affordable Care Act. While a majority of the smaller health care companies created with the affordable care act to serve as alternatives to larger, nationwide insurance failed, Evergreen Health found success. But to continue competing with larger insurance carriers and succeed at its mission to bring honest and affordable healthcare to Marylanders, Evergreen had to build greater awareness and affinity among Maryland residents—a challenge that required a refined brand, a new website and a fully integrated marketing campaign.

Strategy

Supported by extensive research into Evergreen Health’s audiences and company goals, the “Healthcare. Only braver.” campaign was designed to increase insurance enrollment while introducing Evergreen Health as a company that provides smart, honest, and affordable high quality health insurance. idfive was able to enhance the brand with new design elements, a new tagline and a brand mascot that embodies the unique insurance carrier.

everGREEN

With these brand elements in effect, a variety of integrated marketing tactics including banner advertisements, email marketing, advertorials and an e-book entitled “The World’s Easiest Health Insurance Guide (EVER)”, drove leads to unique landing pages and a redesigned website. With the e-book especially, the company was able to commit to their mission of demystifying healthcare and assisting families and individuals, while at the same time gathering interested leads for the sales team. In a field dominated by large corporations, Evergreen Health was able to stand out as a truly approachable, technologically disruptive and ethically committed health insurance option.

A student leans against the glass wall of a server room, running diagnostics on a laptop

American College of Financial Services

Personal Pathway™ campaign.

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American College of Financial Services

The Challenge

The American College of Financial Services has always had industry-leading educational programs for financial professionals. The launch of Personal Pathway™ was giving them a top-level learning model too — but no one had ever heard of it or knew how it worked. The College partnered with idfive to ensure the rollout was worthy of the program.

Wall Street bull statue with motion blur

482%

YoY percentage enrollment increase, July 2019 — July 2020

The team really thought through the customer journey at every touchpoint. With that focus, we were able to tie together several elements to chauffer the user through the benefits of the Personal Pathway experience.

Samantha Eckels

Account Executive

Strategy

The Personal Pathway™ learning experience provides a lot of advantages. Students can learn on their own time and schedule, choose a structured or more customized path, access interactive texts and lesson reviews, and prepare like never before to pass the courses and exams required for two of the most valuable professional designations in the financial advisor field.

Communicating that many advantages required an expansive strategy. Working with The College, our team developed a customer journey that began with targeted online display and social media ads and then led prospects to multiple touchpoints designed to provide a fuller overview and increase interest. These touchpoints included campaign landing pages, emails, an online guide to the learning experience, and a sample lesson only accessible once prospects fill out an RFI. Within this, we also integrated messaging about introductory pricing, creating a customer journey in which each stage increased prospects’ understanding of the product and their desire to enroll.

Design

At its core, the Personal Pathway™ learning experience is about giving financial professionals more control — over their learning and, ultimately, over their career. The design accentuates this, using bold headlines and strong imagery to brand Personal Pathway™ as an experience that puts you in control of your future.

Content Strategy and Copywriting

While a sample lesson and an introductory pricing offer provided incentives for prospects to learn more, idfive’s copywriters had to provide the words that would seal the deal. In addition to the campaign headlines, the copywriters in close collaboration with The College’s marketing team wrote a series of copy-intensive assets ranging from an expansive e-book to an informational webpage to callouts that could be placed within The College’s existing website framework. In every instance, the copy leaned heavily on the promotion of the program’s key selling points while maintaining a consistently bold tone. The combination of hard, well-presented facts with a confident, spirited attitude branded Personal Pathway™ as a must-have learning experience for ambitious financial professionals.

Media

To ensure financial professionals knew about Personal Pathway™, idfive’s media team sought out placements that would hit the right market at the right time. We targeted financial professionals with online display ads as well as Facebook and LinkedIn image ads, lead-gen ads and even video ads. We followed-up with retargeting ads and further augmented the efforts with dynamic search ads that captured prospects actively seeking the kind of educational experience Personal Pathway™ provides.

Client Success

The Personal Pathway™ campaign generated an immediate response and strong results. Within a few days of the campaign’s launch, enrollments started coming in at an impressive pace. Additionally, the campaign helped advance The College’s brand, reinforcing the school’s position as a leader in delivering quality education for financial professionals.

53%

Email Open Rate

Baltimore Police Officer smiles, wearing sunglasses and holding a traffic control whistle in his mouth

Baltimore Police Department: A Force for Good

Recruiting a proud new generation.

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Baltimore Police Department: A Force for Good

Messaging a Recruitment Campaign Around Positive Change

A changing economy, restrictive police qualification standards, and expanding responsibilities are challenging police department recruitment efforts nationwide. For the BPD, a strained relationship with the community it serves compounded these challenges. The BPD needed an authentic yet hopeful recruitment and engagement campaign that demonstrated commitment to constitutional community policing while initiating restorative dialogue.

See the recruitment microsite.

baltimore police department full width desktop ad

Strategy

Working with the BPD and the Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation, idfive uncovered insights from hundreds of hours of officer and community interviews. The message was clear: the traditional macho recruitment messages weren’t going to work. The community didn’t want “cops.” They wanted the police to be a force for positive social change.
We also realized that the best way to reach the community was through the voices and stories of the officers who had been tirelessly working to do good in their own communities. By focusing on their experiences, told in their own words, we knew we’d be able to inspire a whole new generation of recruits who were committed to doing good in Baltimore.

Branding

Bold. Honest. Unflinching. We knew that those three tenets needed to inform all aspects of the campaign. The design bucked the traditional blue often associated with police, and instead featured a bold yellow and black, the colors of Baltimore City’s flag. The strong, condensed font modernized the campaign. Key elements include a main headline style, black and white photography, pops of yellow, custom icons, and the BPD shield logo. These design elements solidify the campaign’s goals and maintain brand consistency.

Black

Yellow

Campaign

The campaign tells stories of real officers who’ve made a real difference in Baltimore. It features honest portrayals of officers and messaging that focuses on the positive aspects of policing — without glossing over the challenges. The #aforceforgood campaign speaks directly to potential recruits who want to bring change to their communities.

Design & Copywriting

The campaign includes digital display ads, paid search, and social media video content as well as :60, :30, and :15 online commercials featuring interviews, body camera footage, and officer profiles. Developed in partnership with the creative agency Kapowza, #aforceforgood sparks an honest but optimistic conversation about the future of the BPD and the city.

Our strategy for this campaign was to let the officers (and their experiences on camera) we featured tell the story. The message — be a part of the greatest comeback story in America — stressed the need for positive change agents with a commitment to social good. As the campaign progressed, we provided a deeper, more visceral look into the impact of police officers. We evolved a conversation that was sparked by negative cell phone videos and court cases into the narrative of a department recommitted to community-based policing and a city’s rebirth.

Media

Online tactics allowed us to better target, measure, and manage audience segments. We focused on metro areas with demographics similar to Baltimore’s — but whose police department salaries were lower and costs of living higher. We appealed to their shared experiences and promoted the benefits of a life and career in Baltimore with social media, YouTube, display, and paid search. We also rewrote and promoted job posts on Indeed and on less traditional sites like Idealist — reframing the role of police officer as creative problem solver and community advocate. Tactics led to landing pages with promoting the audience-specific nuances and benefits of a career with BPD.

Results

The campaign has paid dividends. Between July 2019 and June 2020, applications to join the BPD have doubled and hiring is on pace to increase by 33%. In just nine months, the campaign logged 13,962,753 impressions and 265,055 audience interactions, which have driven the outstanding results.

33%

Increase to hiring pace

Goucher alumna Mildred Dunnock wears a black feather boa in a striking image used for the Undaunted campaign

Goucher College

Connecting alumni, one moment at a time.

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Goucher College

The Challenge

Goucher College announced its intention to raise $100 million dollars by 2022 for an ambitious campus construction and renovation effort. To do that, it would need to inspire donors, alums, and stakeholders — many who’ve had no contact with the school in years — to reconnect and give. The school’s change from female to co-ed in 1987 and the addition of new degree programs made the challenge of meaningfully engaging alumnae/i even more complex. Despite the significant changes at the school over the decades, leadership believed there was still an emotional thread that connected all Goucher students. The college partnered with idfive to find it — and reignite support for the school’s future.

Decorated event space with large posters

The Solution

Through a comprehensive discovery process, idfive and Goucher College found that what excited alumnae and alumni most was recounting the personal moments at the school that changed the trajectory of their lives. It could have been the day they chose to explore a new discipline, a lesson learned in defeat, or an opportunity to stand up and speak their mind.

Inspired by these stories of students taking their first tentative steps despite the uncertainty that lay ahead of them, we developed Goucher Undaunted, a comprehensive online and offline fundraising effort. Each of the campaign’s tactics invites audiences to remember the moments that matter to them while asking them to support the moments-to-come for future students. A giving page features stories of Goucher alumnae/i plotting the moments and places on an interactive campus map. A video shared over social media and during the campaign’s opening gala expresses Goucher’s underlying legacy. And a series of digital and print assets communicate the Goucher Undaunted mission.

In the first year, the campaign has already raised half the funds it needs while giving alumnae/i a reason to reconnect with Goucher College and each other.

Branding

The Goucher experience is marked by shared experience, combined with a signature bold approach to liberal arts education. The Goucher Undaunted emblem reflects that purpose and rallying cry.

The yellow color of the surrounding box and highlighted “UN” represent Goucher’s influence on the lives it touches. Goucher as a contained place and unified concept is comprised of the same lasting element that capacitates the magic “UN”ning moment that summarizes the Goucher experience.

Undaunted Blue

Undaunted Gray

Undaunted Yellow

Goucher Blue

Accent Blue

The Result

The campaign reached half of the total goal in its first year while giving alumnae/i a reason to reconnect with Goucher College—and each other.

A woman smiles while standing at podium during a speech in a conference room

Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Redefining business school prerequisites.

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Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

The Challenge

The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School competes for students in a difficult global market – one that’s gotten even more challenging as economic, political, and demographic forces erode enrollment numbers at business schools nationwide. A decidedly different kind of b-school, Carey looked to focus on both International and domestic students who take a more holistic, mission-based approach to business—fulfilling the Carey mission to “teach business with humanity in mind.”

The Solution

Research/Analysis
Graphic Design
Copywriting
Media
Enrollment Strategy
Branding

Nighttime photo of the Milky Way visible over a mountainous horizon

Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

Expressing the wonder of space exploration.

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Johns Hopkins APL Civil Space

DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING A SPACE EXPLORATION WEBSITE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Civil Space project needed a brand new website to communicate the magnitude and “cool factor” of their work — from defending the planet from asteroids to unraveling the mysteries of the universe — to multiple audiences. And they needed it in nine months. It was rocket science. Literally.

Check out the APL Civil Space website.

Going Boldly

Sure, idfive developers had created interactive maps before. But to meet the challenge of galaxy travel, they created a destination map of the universe — going boldly where no developers have gone before.

Number of templates, including an interactive galaxy map

Strategy

Following our tried-and-true script, an idfive team kicked off the project with our Discover360™ process. We spoke with scientists, engineers, management, marketers, and educators. [A side note: These are some awesome, inspiring folks, some of whom worked on the country’s first space program in the ’60s.] We surveyed a wide cross-section of potential site visitors. We geeked out on web analytics and content audits (not to mention interstellar space), and scoped out what others in the field are doing. Armed with all of that data, we were able to share with our partners a creative brief and strategic direction that would inform everything from site architecture to design. Our aha moment: The site needed to appeal to a wide range of audiences — from middle-school students to rocket scientists — without confusing the one or condescending to the other.

Then COVID-19 hit.

But the idfive team and our APL Civil Space partners refused to let a global pandemic get in the way of our momentum. We switched our brainstorming workshop to a virtual format and presented the first rounds of a proposed Information Architecture and wireframes. Following revisions and approvals, we moved to the design phase and presented three concepts. Elements from all three were incorporated into the final design.

To meet the tight timeline and maximize budget, our developers completed the front- and back-end work concurrently with the design phase, relishing challenges like building a map-of-the-galaxy app. Our copywriters made sure that the final copy would appeal to space novices and rocket scientists alike.

Design

The visuals needed to be as awe-inspiring and compelling as space itself. Our design “North Star,” as pointed out in the project creative brief: “Think of the first time you saw the night sky on a clear, moonless night — away from artificial light or interference.” One picture = 1,000 words.

Development

idfive developers took the challenge of engaging site visitors to a new level by creating a Drupal 8 widget with Augmented Reality and 3-D assets that delivers state-of-the-art space instruments to your screen. Or maybe you have an iOS and want to drop the New Horizons spacecraft on your kitchen counter.

Conclusion

The APL Civil Space website engages school children, rocket scientists, and everyone in between with a richly visual, highly interactive experience — one that piques curiosity, encourages further exploration, and induces wonder. Just like the night sky on a clear, moonless night.

There’s more where that came from.

Explore our website, meet our team, and learn about idfive. Let’s Go

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