Paulina Allende

On April 2, 2025, the Library launched a sticker contest across our campus community, open to all undergraduate students. 

In honor of our resident Columbian mammoths, we looked for designs depicting two mammoths - an adult and a juvenile. We also required for the design to incorporate the text, "Empowering Researchers" and "library.ucmerced.edu" into the design. In addition to the two mammoths, we also asked for designs to include a landscape background inspired by the beauty of our neighboring Yosemite National Park or the Sierra Nevada. 

Within our one-month deadline, we received thousands of views on our Instagram post, and seven incredible submissions from UC Merced students.

A library panel composed of 19 library staff voted on the seven submissions and came up with our top three designs. We asked for our campus community to vote via Instagram for the winning design. In collaboration with our campus partners, who shared our post 155 times across Instagram, we received 253 votes from Instagram users to decide on the winning submission. With 49% of the votes, Kyahra Lingatong's creative design was crowned winner.

Kyahra is a first year Public Health major at UC Merced. She is originally from Roseville, California. As part of her submission, she shared the following about her design, "My process in making the design consisted of using real examples of Colombian mammoths, making sure the juvenile and adult design was simplified, yet also accurate. I had a lot of fun with the background going for a lineless Yosemite Park background using an image of Half Dome as my guide. The colors were also based on sunset, warm colors (they) are inviting and comforting to look at, making the design more coherent. The applications I used included Google (for inspiration) and I drew it all digitally on Procreate." 

Kyahra also shared with us, "Fun fact about the process is that I mistakenly drew the Colombian mammoth for the wooly species at first and it wasn't until I was done with the draft that I realized I was drawing the wrong one. Luckily that was fixed! But, in all seriousness, I am happy to be a part of this in creating representation to Merced's prehistoric past and honoring our researchers. I was able to learn more about the background and history of these fossils that we're so lucky to have on our campus. Thank you again for letting me be a part of this!" 

Congratulations to Kyahra for her winning submission! Our new Library stickers will be sent to be printed during the summer in time to be distributed at Library events during the Fall 2025 semester.