Concept to collectible: The story behind UTSA’s 2025 Fiesta medal

MAY 1, 2025 — This season, UTSA released Moving Together, its official UTSA 2025 Fiesta medal. The keepsake is the university’s first four-layered, rotating Fiesta collectible.

UTSA Senior Designer Emanuel “Mal” Rodriguez designed the 2025 medal. Rodriguez has worked in the Office of University Marketing for the last 10 years, coming up with campaigns and concepts to further the institution's brand and reputation. He’s the artist behind the “Birds of a Feather” campaign that has been displayed on banners across UTSA’s Main and Downtown Campuses.

This year, Rodriguez brought UTSA’s strategic vision to life in Moving Together. He says the university’s merger and integration with UT Health San Antonio inspired his vision for the medal, along with a quote from UTSA President Taylor Eighmy, who is also serving as interim president of UT Health San Antonio.

“President Eighmy says, 'As UTSA advances, so does San Antonio,’” Rodriguez said. “I thought, I want to do something like that. I want to show an advancement. As UTSA moves, so does San Antonio. Let’s get these things to circle around each other.”

UTSA’s 2025 medal contains an orange and blue background with jeweled confetti for its first layer, topped with two rotating layers displaying 11 symbols representative of UTSA and San Antonio such as the Alamo, a UTSA football helmet and the UT Health San Antonio shield. Together, they represent how UTSA, UT Health San Antonio and the city are growing and moving forward together.

While Rodriguez developed the concept for the medal, his peers on University Marketing’s Creative team—Mitzi Shipley, UTSA director of Creative Services, and Gris Campos, multimedia designer III—helped bring his vision to life.

Each year in August and September, three months after Fiesta, the group comes together and brainstorms ideas for the university’s new Fiesta medal. They begin with three creative ideas and eliminate elements that may not work or fit the next year's Fiesta theme until they land on one solid design concept.

After refining their idea, the team sends their complete concept to leadership for approval. Once the medal’s complete concept including elements such as its size, colors and textures are approved, the team sends the order to SA Flavor, a local Fiesta store, for the medals to be produced.

---

---

While creating a Fiesta medal is an exciting task, not everything is guaranteed to go as planned. There are a lot of hurdles to jump before sending in the final order each November. There’s the usual caution of cost, which increases with intricacy and weight.

“There’s always a cost factor,” Rodriguez said. “The more complicated the medal is and the more colors you have, the more expensive the medal is to produce. This year's medal, the original design, had a lot more colors, but we were also trying to do a four-layer and have it spin. Those are the things I think about when I’m designing.”

Through a collective effort, the Roadrunner community has an opportunity to enjoy the final product of a yearlong process.

— Izabella Hernandez

---

---