The biggest (and most stressful 😅) project I led as Creative Director at Gordon College has been a comprehensive brand refresh in 2023. After a decade working with Gordon’s brand, I felt in a unique position to expand on its strengths and open up new opportunities.
Gordon’s previous visual branding was centered around its institutional seal, which remains important. But due to its complexity, it wasn’t visually distinctive at a glance, and while it properly communicated Gordon’s heritage, it did not reflect the more personal and adventurous ethos that defines Gordon’s community as a small, intentionally-Christian liberal arts school with deep New England roots.
This redesign came at the crossroads of new college leadership and an industry in flux. Our creative team advocated for the brand redesign to be an outcome of a deeper process of research and strategic planning and thankfully we launched the brand as a tangible marker of many deeper changes at the school, including 30+ new and reimagined academic programs.
Our creative team developed the above framework to help leadership conceptualize the building blocks that make up a brand identity and to guide us in thinking through the strategic vision that would serve as the foundation for the visual brand and messaging system.
As part of the brand refresh, we also redesigned Gordon's website, starting with the homepage and a brand new way for prospective students to discover academic programs that matched their interests. View website project.
About a year after the brand launch, Gordon introduced a set of schools within the college. The newly defined brand provided a clear framework to expand into a family of School logos:
