Student Voice – 48 Hour Branding Project

Following the 100 Marques project, we were approached by clients within CSAD and briefed on a 48 hour branding task. The brief asked us to rebrand of Cardiff Met’s Student Voice, an area of the university that had previously been lacking a strong visual identity. In a group of five, we began to collaborate and pull some ideas together.

The brief set out some goals:

• Give Student Voice a brand and identity
• Increase awareness and engagement for students, staff and partners
• Convey the messages of listening to students, making changes, friendliness and understanding

Our rebrand also had to follow some principles:

• The brand must be relevant and appropriate to Cardiff Met staff and students
• The brand must be engaging and eye-catching
• The brand must be available to use across multiple formats
• The brand must be able to be bilingual in English and Welsh
• The brand must not look like previous campaigns
• The brand must not include megaphones
• The brand must not inappropriately influence students

We began the ideation process for the logo – the centrepiece of the brand and what would ultimately become it’s main image.

We then took some of these concepts into the digital space to get a sense of what the brand would look like in a more refined state.

With these concepts nailed down, we began to experiment with the colour scheme. We decided to use the shades of blue used within Cardiff Met’s main logo and website identity to create consistency between Student Voice and the rest of the university, strengthening the brand. Alongside this, we decided to use a contrasting hot and pastel pink to add some more friendly connotations in an attempt to make the Student Voice appear less corporate.

We then applied these colours to one of the digital logo mock-ups. We settled on this logo because of it’s simplicity and potential – the ‘V’ representing a happy student, this alone could be used as a symbol to represent the brand. This also promotes the friendliness that was required within the brief.

We then created a couple of poster mock-ups to demonstrate the brand in action. Using a voice recording of “student voice”, the digital sound was converted into a graphic format and used within the poster alongside a slogan and the logo. This demonstrated that the brand could be bilingual, as well as be engaging with a staff and student audience.