Helping local schools increase enrolments and create engaging communications
At Flux, we have developed many projects for primary, secondary and tertiary educational organisations. Over the years this has included school identities (branding), digital outcomes (websites), and important printed items, such as school prospectuses, forms, brochures and signs.
Generally, the core of the challenge is to develop communication outcomes that will help to increase enrolments and improve communication with existing stakeholders. In addition, schools are becoming more savvy about the importance of a sophisticated brand identity, and the power of a brand refresh in communicating a new direction. Schools have a broad need for many different types of printed collateral—most of which we are able to assist with—all whilst maintaining visual consistency.
St Joseph's School Hectorville
We were initially contacted by St Joseph’s Hectorville to consolidate their identity system. The updated system needed to:
- Harmonise with and retain recognition of the existing St Joseph’s branding
- Increase visual consistency
- Have consistency in colours used
- Be flexible, adaptable and easy to apply in-house.
We adjusted the scale and layout of the logo, and chose a contemporary typeface to compliment the existing logo mark. The colours were tweaked for consistency across both print and digital applications. We also developed a broader visual language system using the star shapes from the logo as a decorative device.
All of this was compiled into a style guide to show how the new identity system (including logo rules, typography, colours and broader visual language) should be applied, to ensure maximum consistency going forward.
To demonstrate how the new identity system works, we applied it to the new school prospectus:
This system was soon expanded to other forms of print collateral, such as business cards, folders and flyers:
When the client discovered we also develop websites, they were keen to see if we could continue to maintain their new visual consistency online. They also had a strong idea around having a 50–50 vertical split screen, with visual imagery on the left and written content on the right. This was quite a difficult design and development challenge, particularly when it came to the way it would display on mobile devices. But true to form, our designers and developers found a solution to both issues:
The outcome is a comprehensive and informative website, which is contemporary, functional and responsive. It gives a great impression of the spirit and community of the school. Visit the new St Joseph’s Hectorville website here: sjh.catholic.edu.au
Plympton International College
We were engaged by She Digital Advertising to design and develop a new website for Plympton International College. The brief included a strong emphasis on improving the visual sophistication of the school’s website to align with their new branding.
Other challenges were:
- Restructuring the site’s information architecture to improve navigation
- Simplifying the methods for making contact with the school
- Including Chinese translation. We used the Weglot translation widget which automatically translates the website copy into the desired language, but also enables the school’s Chinese translators to edit the auto translations to improve accuracy.
The outcome was a new, fully responsive WordPress website that is easy to navigate. The new site includes custom built templates and pages which can be easily updated by the client through any web browser.
Adelaide Central School of Art
Our friendly neighbours, the Adelaide Central School of Art, asked if we could design and develop a new website for them.
The project challenges were to:
- Design a highly visual website, showcasing beautiful student artworks and the expansive school grounds
- Ensure the website was fully responsive and would work on all mobile devices
- Make it easier for school admin staff to edit website content themselves
- Implement eCommerce functions, including booking/paying for short courses and gift vouchers online
- Enable the inclusion of video content (for artist talks and other events during Covid restrictions)
The new website not only meets the brief, but also highlights the unique experience of studying at the Adelaide Central School of Art through the inclusion of testimonials from student alumni sprinkled throughout the website. While ACSA has established itself over many decades as a world class art school, the new ACSA website helps to bring this institution up-to-date with the digital expectations of prospective and current students.
Springbank Secondary College
Late in the spring of 2018, Springbank Secondary College (formerly Pasadena High School) came to Flux in need of an identity update that would give their branding a fresh, contemporary feel. Along with the new school name, they wished to modernise their overall look while still keeping in mind the school’s history and long-standing place within the surrounding community. The school’s pedagogy, specialised facilities and new partnerships with the Australian Science & Mathematics School and Flinders University were also to be considered.
Springbank Secondary College is a progressive, forward-thinking school with a focus on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics). Students have opportunities to participate in a number of music, drama and performance events at the Tower Arts Centre. The Disability Unit, Basketball Academy and Trade Training Centre also provide students at Springbank College with a wide range of specialised opportunities. The curriculum encourages curiosity, innovation and creativity through enquiry-based learning. It was clear that the new identity system should incorporate a small piece of all of these attributes while also creating a sense of unity and inclusivity—values that the school bases much of its teachings around.
Based on these values and priorities, we developed a new motto for the school: ‘igniting inquisitive imagination’. The overall meaning is to spark an interest in learning things and form new ideas. Advancements in science and engineering can only be made with forming new ideas on top of a solid knowledge base. This motto also promotes inclusivity as having imagination and an inquisitive mind are attributes not exclusive to those with academic ability.
The overall logomark is unique and contemporary to show how the school is progressive, forward‑thinking and creative. We incorporated a range of shapes within the logo to express diversity, inclusivity & community. The STEAM focus is portrayed through geometric shapes such as a bar graph, a leaf, a pencil and a spotlight. The natural landscape of the school site, which has a river running through it, is incorporated with flowing lines running through the logo. The leaf shape also expresses new growth, and references the unique windows in the Tower Art Centre.
Combined with a bold new colour scheme and playful patterns, the new Springbank branding displays the creativity, innovation, inclusivity and excitement that the school so strongly encourages in its students.
Avenues College
When Windsor Gardens Secondary College amalgamated with Gilles Plains Primary School and Gilles Plains Children’s Centre, they approached us to create a new identity for the school. As the school was also renaming to Avenues College, they needed a complete branding refresh.
Initially we began work by analysing the identities of competing schools in the area to find gaps in the market. We also researched the location and surrounding suburbs of the school to get a sense of the local community and what makes the Avenues College distinct. In addition, we explored imagery and symbols depicting education and learning.
The end result is a unique and memorable crest with layers of meaning. The three lines meeting at the top represent the three schools merging; these same three lines travelling downwards represent multiple students pathways, which is part of the essence of the new name, Avenues. We retained use of circles which were used throughout all three old school logos. In the new identity, these circles also depict trees to represent the local tree lined streets. The shapes highlighted in the centre of the crest form the letter ‘A’ for Avenues, as well as symbolising the top of a pencil to portray education in the form of writing and more broadly, the Arts.
Madison Park School
The purpose of this project was to:
- Create a new brand identity for an existing school
- Ensure the new brand identity is relevant, creative, polished and professional
- Ensure the new brand identity represents the school’s values and community’s aspirations.
The existing school identity system was fragmented and inconsistent. This results in a loss of brand recognition. The current logo was also unrefined, giving it an unprofessional appearance.
We assessed the logo market and identified a gap—no local school was using a graphic that represented education in their logo.
The school community’s values and aspirations are communicated through a simple graphic which touches on the following themes:
Education: The essence of why schools exist.
Aspiration/Inspiration: Anything that exists above head height that requires us to ‘reach up’ can symbolise our aspirations or our desire to achieve something that is normally out of reach. Celestial bodies of any description are always a good example.
Community: This theme can be represented simply with the repetition of any element so that one becomes a group of many.
Repeating and rotating this image creates several other layers of meaning:
- A group of students sitting in a circle reading
- A community
- A floral pattern representing growth
- The sun rising over the horizon, representing warmth and ‘a new start’.
St Martin's Catholic Primary School
St Martin’s Catholic Primary School needed a suite of documents they could leave with or send out to parents of prospective students. The solution had to provide flexibility and deliver good value.
Flux took the school’s existing photographs and brand identity system and designed a new prospectus booklet and folder system. The design of all items included a new, more dramatic focus on the school’s motto “Loving to Learn. Learning to Love.”
The new suite of documents gives the principal and other staff full flexibility in how they packaged information for prospective parents. We also designed a greeting card which was printed with the presentation folder, adding additional value to the end result.
Gawler East Primary School
Gawler East Primary School engaged Flux to redesign their school identity. The old school identity system was fragmented and inconsistent, resulting in a loss of brand recognition. While we could see the community values of the school represented in the old logo, the execution was unrefined, giving it an unprofessional appearance.
Gawler East’s overarching focus as a school is on the involvement and collaboration with the school children as decision makers. This inclusive environment, as well as the school’s motto, ‘Learning is for Living’, were the key factors that we explored and formed the basis of our identity concept.
Our identity solution uses leaf shapes to express growth, which double as an abstract representation of adults and children working together. These shapes are also used in the broader visual language of the branding, as a stripe or pattern across a range of applications.
Some of our local education clients
St Joseph's Hectorville
Adelaide Central School of Art
