The North Carolina Supercomputing Center (NCSC) needed a corporate brochure that would strongly position them in the high-performance computing market. The challenge was to show the exciting research scientists were performing in collaboration with NCSC in an interesting way, to other scientists as well as industry executives -- two very different audiences. As NCSC's Corporate Information Officer Mike Clark describes, "We needed to speak to a diverse audience without insulting half of them and boring the rest."

Kowal Design worked with an in-house team of writers at NCSC to study the communication problem. The cover (pictured) was created as a purely inspirational image about touching the future with science. Inside the brochure, thirteen scientists explained their research on the supercomputer in their own words. This was meaningful for the scientific audience. For the non-scientific audience we used photographic images showing how their research applies to a life situation. A brief caption further explains how the science relates to the image. The graphic (pictured) shows a single spread.

The brochure successfully increased both enthusiasm and revenue for NCSC. After receiving the brochure Glaxo pharmaceuticals contacted NCSC expressing excitement about the scope of their resources -- the result was a new contract. The director of NCSC, Larry Lee, received this e-mail message from Larry Brandt, the director of the National Science Foundation. "WOW! I have not read the brochure yet, but the look, feel, and impact of it is really high quality. I hate to admit it, but it's better than the one we just did for the four NSF Centers. Rich agrees. Keep up the good work -- show this to the other CASC members and watch them turn green with envy."