Learning for life

We started the process with a full brand audit of all existing brand collateral, which from an outsiders point-of-view was looking a bit disjointed and confusing. We believed that the ethos and values were being promoted well by the staff and students, but were not being conveyed through the brand, so our first task was to develop the existing ‘We learn not for school, but for life.’ motto. Using this we created key messages to use throughout the various communication channels.

The next stage of the project was to create the right assets to give the brand a cohesive look. We started by exploring colours that fitted in with the introduction of new school uniforms and integrated them with the schools traditional colour palette. Choosing typography for a school that’s over 600 years old was always going to be a challenge, but we found a good contemporary serif that worked both in print and online at various sizes and weights.

The new responsive website site needed to promote the schools ethos, with the emphasis on people and places. We created a visually interactive site that is easy to navigate and informative without being too content heavy. We included a social wall to pull through live Twitter and Facebook feeds, to encourage parents and pupils to use the main site more. We also built a fully responsive website, without losing too many of the rich features when viewed on mobile devices.

Alongside the website, Absolute designed a suite of promotional literature. We created individual brochures, each focussing on an area of the school so that the Oswestry marketing team could tailor the relevant information and send out to prospective parents in a bespoke folder. Working with commissioned photography, and as part of the brand development, we created a set of illustrations to emphasise key messages throughout the brochures. These were also integrated into the digital designs to give the brand a cohesive look and feel.