Brand Identity.
The Letters Project.
Mar 1, 2023
I was responsible for crafting a brand identity for this project along a set of simple parameters. The resulting design language allows the project's content to remain the focus, framed by a hand-crafted, personal aesthetic.
Along with several peers, I co-founded a project to showcase the personal stories and recollections of students, alumni and faculty at The King's College in New York City in an effort to raise money to combat the institution's financial troubles.
As the designer on our founding team, I was responsible for crafting a visual identity to represent the project across our website and prepared social media assets for our supporters. We set several parameters as a group. First, our brand would neither conflict with nor match the brand colors of The King's College (pictured below). Second, it was important to visually establish that we operated with the blessing of the institution, but distinctly independent of it.
To establish this duality of institutional distance and connection, we received permission to adopt the College's lion crest, pairing it with a simple white-and-black color palate. The addition of both a serif and "handwritten" font gave the project's materials and classic, artisan quality to evoke the personal letters we showcased.
It was important to use a design language that drew attention to our cause rather than itself. We also desired a brand that reflected Manhattan's Financial District, where the institution at the center of our project was located. I decided to use imagery of both the Financial District and the Empire State Building (where the College was located previously) along with headshots of our project's contributors. All images were converted to grayscale with a sepia tint.
Upon launch, the project grew quickly, amassing tens of thousands of views and expanding to a large collection of submissions. We also attracted the attention of several New York media outlets, including The New York Times, which interviewed me personally for an article about the College. The project, still available online, can be viewed at tkclettersproject.com.
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