Link Centennial!
Rebrand for Visit Centennial
Date
October 2023
Type
Academic project at
NC State University
Branding systems
Visual design
Typographic design
Team
Nicholas Arthur
Abigail Harris
Caro Yuziuk
Overview
Visit Centennial, an initiative which promoted events and activities on NC State Centennial Campus, was undergoing changes. It began as a way to get people involved in the many exciting things the campus had to offer; however, the campus was still being underutilized by students and locals. Split into several teams, my studio took on the challenge of doing a complete overhaul of the brand to eventually be pitched to representatives.
My Role
During the entirety of the project, I kept track of my team's work by organizing our process into a presentation deck. I was responsible for designing the final presentation which was shown to the Visit Centennial team. I designed the site analysis section of our presentation based on my team's survey of Centennial Campus.
I worked in tandem with Abigail Harris to develop the logo, ultimately fusing our separate logo ideation journeys into a cohesive one. I also designed the event posters, social media promotions, and the Scenic Walk landmark signage.
Setting the Scene
NC State's Rezoning
During the time of this project, there was news of infrastructure updates coming to NC State University, and as part of that, the Campus Master Plan (CMP). The CMP established a framework that would create a live, work, and play environment to Centennial Campus.
These changes were slated to occur over the following years, so this branding project provided the perfect opportunity to design a brand for the future.
Campus Attractions
Centennial Campus has many places of interest, and Lake Raleigh Recreation Area is a prominent one. The lake is host to many exciting activities like hiking, fishing, and boating. The campus is also known for James B. Hunt Jr Library which is a nationally recognized learning space. Other features include colleges, apartments, and research facilities. Overall, this campus is a place where anyone can thrive, whether it be student, working professional, or Raleigh local. Our brand needed to celebrate the diversity of what this community has to offer.
Brand Identity
Our Mission
Enable Centennial Campus to thrive as a point of centrality for students, workers, and Raleigh locals by increasing the visibility of its unique features.
Our Strategy
Our brand strategy employs three core ideas to achieve this goal:
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Nature: Engage the parks and other green spaces on campus.
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Community: Foster collaboration with local communities and enterprises on and off campus.
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Accessibility: Prioritize wayfinding for prominent campus locations.
Primary Logo / Secondary Logos
From the beginning, our logo was always a wordmark because we wanted the name to speak for itself. Since the brand we were replacing, Visit Centennial, consisted of a verb, we naturally followed that structure. "Link" became the verb that my team felt communicated our brand's mission—linking people to what Centennial Campus has to offer.
When designing our logo, I manipulated the typeface to visually convey a sense of union. I extended letter strokes, decreased kerning, and created an illusion of overlapping shapes to do so.
Brand Colors / Typefaces
A constraint for our brand was to utilize only official NC State brand colors and implement one of its typefaces, Univers; this helped ensure a seamless transition from the previous brand identity.
Icons / Motifs
Our icons and motifs were derived from the visual language of our logo. The typeface we chose, Droide Anthro, has rounded diamonds for titles, so we used the same shape in our icons and motifs for visual consistency. We also used similar overlapping techniques found in the "k" of our logo in the speakerphone icon and motifs.
Having certain shapes echoed throughout our brand makes our brand easier to recognize among others on campus.
Social Media
Event Posters
I referenced existing campus events and designed their posters using the Link Centennial! brand identity.
My illustrations incorporate the diamond motif, particularly to represent circular objects. Such strong adherence to brand colors and shapes makes these posters stand out (and the creative use of the diamond gives them unique character!)
Location Ads
These posts demonstrate the use cases for the primary brand colors of Link Centennial!
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Orange (Community): The StateView Hotel is a gathering space where events are hosted.
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Green (Nature): Lake Raleigh Recreation Area is a prominent green space adjacent to campus.
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Blue (Innovation): The Wilson College of Textiles is a place where innovative ideas are born.
Site Analysis
Centennial Campus was not familiar territory for my team and I considering we spent most of our time on North Campus. To get a feel for it, we wandered around for a few hours, snapping pictures and making observations. Our main takeaway was that our brand needed to emphasize the campus' many great outdoor spaces.
Campus Signage
Our response to the site analysis findings was developing a signage system for Link Centennial! This system is composed of landmark signs to be incorporated along the Scenic Walk we devised and other special campus locations. Caro, the industrial designer on our team, created the renderings of the signs.
Landmark Signs for Scenic Walk
My team created the Scenic Walk as a way to get people to explore campus by following a route marked by signs. These are the kinds of locations we selected as part of the Scenic Walk:
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Beautiful green spaces that did not have official signage.
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Prominent gathering spaces without signage.
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Locations that had inadequate signage.
Location Signs
The next set of signs we worked on were for navigation. These signs are larger and therefore easier to read from afar and while driving. We took inspiration from the signs NC State uses for building identification so people could easily orient themselves.
Reflection
Designing an Experience
This was more than just a branding project for me—it was an experience design project. Brand design entails curating an experience, and this was the first project where I felt I truly created an experience through branding. My team got familiar with the layout and physical properties of Centennial Campus before we even considered designing. We learned what it did best and what it could improve on so that our brand could act as a design response, rather than an intervention.
Working on a brand that has digital and physical prominence made me fall in love with designing for systems. It's a rewarding experience to go from quick ideas in a notebook to an interconnected system of visuals that leverage emotional resonance and pattern recognition to deliver an experience to users.