James Raymond (Jim) Mann, an architectural illustrator in Penn’s division of Facilities and Real Estate Services (FRES), passed away on December 26, 2021. He was 75.

Mr. Mann apprenticed under Edward H. Leman, the White House artist during the Kennedy administration and the designer of renovations for the Red Room and the Green Room commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy, in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1976, Mr. Mann joined Penn’s Planning Office, the precursor to today’s FRES, as an architectural illustrator (or, in his words, as a “graphic stuntperson”). He worked with planners and architects to produce renderings (and later, photos) of proposed buildings and renovations on Penn’s campus. Many of his drawings appeared in Almanac over the years, illustrating exciting Penn building projects.

Over the course of his forty-year career, Mr. Mann was responsible for managing virtually all campus signage and graphic standards, including the now-familiar building identification and wayfinding blades, campus maps, donor signage, construction fencing scrims, and event banners. The Penn banners currently displayed on streetlight poles around campus are his design. When Mr. Mann retired in 2015, he mentored the two graphic designers who succeeded him.

Outside of his role at Penn, Mr. Mann was an established landscape artist, painting watercolor scenes of farm life, small-town scenes, covered bridges, trains, and especially lighthouses. His work filled calendars and magazine stories and appeared on the occasional book cover. In his retirement years, Mr. Mann lived on a farm in Orefield, PA, and raised all manner of wildlife. Upon his death, Mr. Mann donated his body to the Perelman School of Medicine for research.

Mr. Mann is survived by his wife, Joyce Susan Mundis Mann; his sons, Jason (Tina), Joshua (Julia), and James; and five grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations in Mr. Mann’s name can be made to Meals on Wheels or another meaningful cause of the donor’s choice.