School of Media News

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – WKU students, working in coordination with a local non-profit, will use a social media marketing campaign to raise funds for the acquisition and restoration of the last remaining military De Havilland 4 (DH-4) airframe in the U.S.

“Being an artifact of aviation history, the restored 1917 DH-4 invokes the memory of a 100-year-old warplane and pays tribute to an American aviation legend,” said Dorian Walker, chairman of the educational non-profit Friends of Jenny organization.

As an Army veteran and aviation enthusiast, Walker sees the rebuilding of the DH-4 as a way of commemorating air service veterans of past and present, as well as bringing to life America’s original WWI fighter plane.

The project - part of a course in user experience design in WKU’s Advertising major – challenged user experience design students to research, conceptualize, design and deploy special branding and digital assets leading to a crowdsourced Kickstarter campaign set to launch May 1st.

“This project represents the culmination of everything we try to teach in our advertising program,” said Kelley Coppinger, professional in residence and project coordinator. “The skills we feature in this course are in great demand throughout the advertising industry and will serve not only the Saving Liberty DH-4 project, but students as the seek employment in a competitive digital landscape.”

For more information about the project, or to make a donation to Saving Liberty DH-4 https://www.facebook.com/savinglibertydh4/?fref=ts