Brand Identity for Hollywater School

Hollywater School

SERVICES

BRAND IDENTITY & DESIGN

We were delighted to be chosen to work with local community special school, Hollywater School, to develop a new, modern, and representative brand identity.

Founded in 2006, Hollywater School is an all-through, co-ed school with 130 students aged 4 – 19 years. Hollywater strives to provide stimulating educational opportunities within a safe, healthy, happy, caring, and inclusive environment.

In keeping with their mission to work in partnership with parents and carers, the rebrand project was kicked off with a survey to gather valuable input from the school community, to feed into the brief for this important project.

Research, inspiration, story-telling

Based on the brief, we got to work to immerse ourselves in understanding the unique needs of this rebrand; to design an identity to resonate with students, parents, carers, educators, professionals, and the wider community.

The logo needed to be clear, colourful, and convey the school’s commitment of providing a safe, supportive, and inclusive learning environment, that empowers students with disabilities and special educational needs.

Some key words to shape our design development were: Growth. Support. Creativity. Independence.

The creative development process

When we develop a brand identity, there are usually several phases of creative development. Generally we start with a selection of sketches to which are shared with the client to gain further insight into likes and dislikes fur further development. We would typically then refine 3 - 4 concepts based on the feedback, bringing in colour, font, size and device variation. At each stage of development we embrace the client feedback and push them and our creativity to tease out the most critical elements for the logo.

A logo is made up of various elements depending on the brief; a device, name, strapline, font and colour pallete - which all need to be refined to work together to achieve the final, robust design. Part of our process is also to look at what’s already out there. Not just competitors to ensure your new brand will stand out, we also look at other industries and brands for inspiration. What’s being done well, what’s not working and what’s missing.

Seeing examples of logos which don’t hit the mark can be just as informative to the process as seeing a brand that’s completely nailed it!

Hollywater’s new brand identity

After working closely with the Brand Committee to develop and refine the logo, we are pleased to share Hollywater School’s new brand identity.

The new logo is a dynamic representation of the School’s values and vision, with a focus on ‘reaching for the stars’ and featuring a subtle nod to the ‘healing springs’ provenance of Hollywater as a place, within the inclusion of green in the colour palette representing the outdoor space and beautiful surrounding areas.

The new logo has now been rolled out for use across digital and traditional media, sich as website and social media, brochures, stationery, uniform, letterheard and signage. You can see the brand in use on the School website here: www.hollywaterschool.co.uk

Hayley Jones, Finance & Administration Manager shared her thoughts on the project:

'The process of creating a simple, inclusive and inspiring identity for a changing and growing special school isn't necessarily a straightforward task. Mzuri were the perfect partners to support us with this challenge. They took the time to really understand out vision, and delivered us a modern and fresh new logo that supports our new school values, and simply and elegantly communicates our identity. Their creative expertise and professionalism shone through at every interaction and they weren't afraid to challenge when they felt their creative guidance was needed to keep us on track! It was a pleasure working with them and we would definitely recommend their services to anyone looking for a creative partner.'

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