In October By The Scruff was approached by Mulberry School for Girls in the nearby area of Tower Hamlets to engage with the rebranding of the Extended Learning department. The existing identity was incoherent, dated and lacked consistency; the school wished to bring a number of extracurricular activities and events programmes under one department of extended learning.
Mulberry required a new design for the overall department of Extended Learning, in addition to this there needed to be a number of visual identities for each of the separate strands which included ‘Women’s Education’, ‘Global Education’ and ‘Pupil Voice’. The aim of the brief was to encourage participation in extended learning activities for 11 to 18 year olds and provide a positive impression to partner organisations, parents and the community.
Our designer Andy Pick went along to Mulberry School to talk to the students and to gain an insight into the target audience and to talk about the design process involved and initial ideas.
Following the discussion Andy drew up a number of ideas along the theme of extended learning and made a number of modifications based on feedback from the school.
The concept needed to be concise and clear, furthermore the visual identities needed to translate well across both digital and print media. The final solution was a unified strong visual identity for the department and all its strands.
Each ‘ident’ is unified by a circular clock face with a segment to represent each strand in the department. A stylised book is also used to unify each strand and represent the overall theme of learning. We felt it was important to be non-patronising with the approach to designs. Strong iconography and individual colours for each departmental strand would help convey each extended learning department.
Each visual identity is translated into a monochromatic, full-colour and single tone black and white for both print and digital.