Winner Gold 2015 Logo Design Award, American Advertising Awards, Coastal California, AAF
Background
When the Ventura Unified School district wanted to create a magnet program with six of their elementary (primary) schools, new logos needed to be created for each of the schools, along with a connected look that could enable marketing them together as a new concept.
Along with the leads of this initiative, I spent time in each school, meeting with principals, parents and teachers to learn what these schools cared about, how they identified themselves and what they wanted most for this new era. I was completely inspired by how passionate and protective each party was to their existing and long standing aesthetics and history.
Process
This involved choosing new colors for each school that were as close as possible to each school’s previous colors but brought new vibrancy and contrast to the colors of the other schools. New icons were illustrated for each school to highlight the specialties that each would focus on. And new mascots were essential, featuring new illustrations that took the best parts of any existing mascots and transformed these animals and icons to be their most dynamic selves that represent not just an image of that animal but reflect the values of why those animals were chosen in the first place. That means bears and lions couldn’t be scary or dangerous. These animals needed to be their most dynamic selves while representing peacefulness, strength, & leadership, all while being created in a style that made them look like they could each be a part of the same family. End results are a combination of hand & digital illustration with Adobe Illustrator.