The Initiative for Caltech Students

With the California Institute of Technology (aka Caltech) I had an opportunity to work on the branding of a unique capital campaign. Like other capital campaigns it’s still focused primarily on gifts from major donors, but the money isn’t earmarked for one specific project. The $250 million will go towards improving the student experience, from scholarships and graduate fellowships to career and mental health services.

Already known for being an elite school when it comes to academics, this campaign aims to support students outside of the classroom at a formative time in their lives and improve the overall Caltech student experience.

Creative Oversight: Matt Ipcar

Brand Concepts & Design Lead: Shannon Kelly

Messaging: Adrienne Bell

Brand Concepts Round 1

Equipped with insights from the research phase that explored prospective donors’ motivations and barriers for giving, I set to work on the brand concepts.

The nature of our timeline meant we were actually exploring names, finalizing the brand proposition, and honing the concept for the campaign all at the same time. What I did have to go off of were four guiding pillars we’d developed: “Experience Focused”, “Most Innovative Minds”, “Investment in the Future”, & “Everything is Possible.”

Brand Concepts Round 2

In typical first-round fashion, the client liked the black & white photography from one concept, the symbol used in another, and the idea of incorporating scientific imagery from the other.

I evolved one of the original ideas and returned to the feedback and sketchbook to come up with two new concepts. And now we even had a name to experiment with; The Initiative for Caltech Students.

Brand Concepts Round 3

By Round 2 the client liked two concepts equally and weren’t quite ready to decide. I opted to keep both in the mix and for continued exploration in Round 3.

With more about the brand solidified, it was also the right time to get more expansive with the visual exploration. This round kept social media samples in the mix but also aimed to set up some of the building blocks for the microsite which would be the first big deliverable for the campaign.

The Integral Concept

This concept had been there from the start, evolving over the previous rounds. It looked more like a traditional capital campaign for higher education, partly because there was a subtle nod to a mathematics textbook in the use of the plus sign grid texture and the lowercase italics font inspired by an equation’s type styling.

The integral symbol is used most frequently in Calculus at the start of an equation and would be familiar to any current or former Techer. I loved the way we could use this symbol to offset text and as a shape layer in the black & white photography to add interest and create stronger focal points, but more than that I loved the punny set-up that stemmed from it—‘What’s integral to the success of Caltech students?’

The Prism Concept

This dark horse concept was one of the new ideas from the previous round and while it ultimately changed a lot visually, the driving force of it remained the same—the idea of ‘prisms’. Prisms are present in both mathematical and scientific fields so it was broad enough to not alienate alumni who had studied different things but was clearly at home in the landscape of STEM.

It also had legs conceptually. From the very beginning, this campaign set out to address the real and diverse issues students were facing and look at the student experience from all angles. The ‘prism’ is fertile ground for visuals, but metaphorically our team and the client saw the power it held in sharing the overarching objective of the campaign. And where the other concept was a little on-the-nose aesthetically, this concept adopted a more Silicon Valley start-up look that would feel familiar to the audience we were most trying to reach.

The Final Brand Guidelines

We had a name! And we had a winning concept! The last leg of branding was all about systematizing and documenting so that any future Caltech staff or partners could quickly get up to speed and start generating creative. My portion of the brand guide dealt primarily with the Visual System and outlining those building blocks: the suite of logos, the typography and palette, as well as the different graphic elements at play. My colleagues then took the ideas I’d begun exploring to flush out the voice & tone and messaging, combining the concept with our strategic learnings to craft something that would compel a donor to give 6-figures.

The Microsite

Upon completing the brand guidelines, I lead the design work for the microsite where the visuals and messaging tell the stories of the students and donors at the heart of the campaign and the vision for each pillar that funding will be put towards.

I also partnered with videographers on frames, transition wipes, lower thirds, and end card designs for the campaign launch video.

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