Founded in 1906 along the Red River in Fargo, Oak Grove Lutheran School began as the Lutheran Ladies Seminary with just 24 students. Over the next 120 years, the school expanded its mission, programs, and physical footprint and today serves approximately 740 PreK–12 students across two campuses.
JLG was hired to develop a cohesive experiential brand, environmental graphics, donor recognition, and wayfinding system across both campuses. The completed package included 30+ environmental graphics, campus and building directories, interior and exterior wayfinding, identification signage, donor recognition, history wall, and large-scale wall and glazing installations.
A portion of the design process was dedicated to research, curation, and content development, supported by an incredibly well-organized and preserved Oak Grove archive. More than a century of photographs, documents, publications, and artifacts have been carefully maintained, including Norwegian Bibles dating to the 1870s. A published history of the school by historian Hiram M. Drache provided another strong foundation for establishing the timeline and understanding the people, places, events, and traditions that shaped Oak Grove. The design process became an exercise in thoughtfully curating this remarkable collection, determining which stories to tell, how deeply to tell them, and how history could be translated into an experience appropriate to each audience and location.
The history wall became the most concentrated expression of that work, bringing original artifacts together with archival imagery, dimensional lettering and dates, and custom oak frames that highlight significant photographs and moments. Historic objects, including the 1870s Norwegian Bibles, add another layer of authenticity, allowing students and visitors to encounter pieces of Oak Grove’s history alongside the stories they represent.
That historical storytelling extends throughout the school through large-scale archival graphics highlighting defining places and events, including the Gateway and original Oak Grove Park, the Castle where the school began, Jackson Hall, and the historic flood (pictured below). Gold callout boxes layered into the imagery isolate key details, stories, and facts, allowing someone walking past to quickly discover something they may not have known. These installations collectively build a larger picture of Oak Grove’s people, places, milestones, and memories.
From that historical foundation, the graphics transition into shared values, culture, and the contemporary student experience. Imagery and messaging create a visual bridge between the North and South Campuses, reinforcing a common Oak Grove identity across different buildings, ages, and locations.
“Acorns to Oaks” is a theme already used by Oak Grove – the idea that its youngest students begin as acorns and grow into mighty oaks. With the Elementary School on the South Campus and older students on the historic North Campus, we saw an opportunity to strengthen that idea and carry it visually throughout both campuses. A custom map uses an acorn to identify the Elementary/South Campus and a mature oak to identify the North Campus, connecting the two places with the journey students make as they grow through Oak Grove.
At the Elementary School, that idea became a 30-foot-wide by 24-foot-high oak tree composed entirely of individual acorns. The installation transforms “Acorns to Oaks” into an immersive expression of student growth, extending seamlessly across wall and glazing as one continuous composition. Whimsical animals, butterflies, and hidden details invite younger students to explore the graphic up close—reinforcing a simple idea they can grow with: every mighty oak begins as an acorn.
LIVING HISTORY – DONOR WALL
Oak trees themselves became part of the storytelling. During a recent building addition, two 130-year-old oak trees had to be removed from the historic campus and were carefully preserved. Their wood was then incorporated into the North Campus donor wall. What better way to recognize today’s donors—investing in future generations and leaving their own legacy—than with oak trees that predated the school’s humble beginnings? The wall now carries a physical piece of the historic campus forward as part of Oak Grove’s next chapter.
MATERIAL HEALTH + DURABILITY
The project also prompted a closer look at the materials behind the environmental graphics themselves. Commercial vinyl remains widely used because of its durability, cleanability, print quality, availability, and cost, particularly in high-traffic educational environments. For Oak Grove, we also utilized Murals Your Way Eco Bella®, a commercial-grade, Type II wallcovering that is PVC-free, contains 31% post-consumer recycled content, and contains no lead, plasticizers, or heavy metals. As we continue evaluating material health within environmental graphics, products like this offer an opportunity to explore PVC-free alternatives while still balancing the performance, maintenance, longevity, installation, and budget requirements of large-scale installations.
The final result is intentionally more than a collection of feature walls. It is a coordinated system of wayfinding, identity, archival research, content strategy, donor recognition, environmental graphics, illustration, material health, and material reuse distributed across two campuses.
The experience moves from Oak Grove’s earliest history and defining places, through the shared values and culture of the school today, and ultimately to Acorns to Oaks, a visual thread connecting the school’s history, its two campuses, and generations of students still growing within them.
