casid: visual identity

casid — a student activity center of the university of wrocław — was my client for this project, which spanned six months and covered five different university courses. we were encouraged to seek out real-life clients, conduct an analysis of their communication, and work with them in order to prepare a holistic strategy for their future work.

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the student activity center at uwr had just been created at the time of this project's start, but it was built on the foundations of the university's career office and ran by the same group of employees. this meant that my team was in a unique position of working with an office that needed a visual identity and a strategy built from scratch, but still had past communications to look back at. because of this, we got to be an active part in the design of a whole new entity with an engaged audience looking forward to its first messages.

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part one: strategic planning

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we started out with an analysis of the office's identity as expressed in its self-branding strategies, and then comparing that to its online presence. next, through a carefully prepared questionnaire we gathered the opinions of both local and international students to make sure we were reaching all audiences. the research found quite a gap between the career office's communications and the students' expectations, both in form and in content.

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in the end, our action plan for the office consisted of a series of actions targetting each of the diagnosed communication issues. another important task was crafting a social media content creation manual for the office employees. this effort to make future social media work easy on the casid team was an underlying theme: we made sure to create all of the template graphics in an easy-to-use online editor and we preemptively designed quite a lot of components that could then be conveniently copied and pasted in future projects.

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part two: visual identity

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the final step of our communication strategy was the preparation of casid's visual identity. the work started with joining the employees in defining casid's core values and brand characteristics. together we came to the conclusion that the student activity center would have to stand for action and dynamism, but also creativity and warmth. a lot of emphasis should be put on cooperation and diversity, since the foundation of the center would be various groups working together towards shared student goals.

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visually, we wanted casid to contrast the ever-present university blue, but not stray too far from uwr's branding either. as a result, we decided to go for a warm orange but kept the special university font. after much trial and error we settled on the visual metaphor of a caleidoscope to symbolize diversity and dynamic changes, but at the same time creativity. the three layers symbolise the three offices that built the student activity center, and the logo elements can be reconstructed into various combinations and patterns when it comes to merch design.

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all in all, this project was an incredible test of our skills in design, consulting, and strategy. what emerged from these six months of work was a visually appealing, complex new brand identity, with a strategy to back it up and a team of very prepared and excited office employees to keep the communication going in the right direction.

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tools: adobe illustrator, canva, adobe photoshop

skills: logo design, consulting, strategic planning, social media content creation

date: 2022

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team: karolina kołpaczkiewicz, aleksandra kabala