Visions

Role
Lead designer

Timeline
2015-2019

Skills
Branding
Print design
Merchandise design

Tools
InDesign
Photoshop
Illustrator
Mailchimp

NSBHS Visions is a student-run media and communications committee, aiming to contribute to and enrich the North Sydney Boys High School community through a series of long-term projects, including The 4U Paper student magazine, the StudyGroups program, the myNSB app, and the Showcase galleries. As an Executive, I was responsible for managing the committee's administrative side, including logistics and finance. In 2018 I oversaw the development of the committee's new visual identity and digital presence to ensure that Visions became the most recognised committee in the school.

School committees are often seen as a place for 'popular kids' to gain recognition and add leadership roles to their resume. As a result, committees rarely get anything productive done. Visions wanted to distance ourselves from these negative connotations by operating with a start-up mindset and 'get things done' attitude. We needed a new brand identity to showcase our new direction.

First, we started out by conducing a survey of over 100 students. We found that Visions was ranked the lowest in terms of importance, and that our purpose wasn't clear.

With these survey findings in mind, Visions knew that we needed to simplify our brand and make it clearer what it is that we actually do. I decided to reduce the number of logos variants from 12 down to two designs in either purple or white. The project logos for The 4U Paper, StudyGroups and myNSB were also simplified.

These new designs were introduced across noticeboards and assemblies so that the whole school would be aware of our new branding. No other committee had a consistent design style or wide reach, so we had already begun to attract new interest and differentiated ourselves from the other committees.

Next, we decided to simplify the sign up process to make it easier for students to join Visions. Traditionally, the school would print out paper forms in Term 3 each year, using the same template for each committee. However, this process locked us into the school's schedule and sign up format. I developed a new sign up process using Mailchimp that would make the sign up process more convenient and further showcase Visions as an innovative committee.

After filling in the Mailchimp form, students would automatically receive an email giving them more information about our projects and a link to confirm their involvement in any of the projects. If a student does not respond with two days, Mailchimp would automatically send a follow up email. The use of merge tags also allowed us to include the student's name in the email, making it seem more personal.

As students gradually became accustomed to seeing the Visions logo around the school, I felt confident that we could drop the wordmark from our logo and promote the pigeon icon by itself. I designed a range of merchandise featuring the icon, including a t-shirt, badges, keyrings and mugs.




I distributed the same survey at the end of the year and students responded by voting Visions as the number one most important committee in the school. I also received feedback that Visions was the most professional committee and the only committee that made a difference to the school. I'm extremely proud of how we were able to turn Visions around within a year, through good design and effective communication.

The 4U Paper