When rebranding your school, there are many things to consider, from your website to your logo to school signage. But behind all of that, the essential question you need to ask is this: what is your new ethos? What about your messaging has changed As it should have been before, all of your marketing will need to be based around the essential ideas you want to embody. Here, we have 5 handy rebranding tips for your school
1. Create a style guide
If you’re looking to pin down your new style/branding visually, a style guide could be a great place to start! Simply put, this is a document that details your house style: what fonts and colour schemes you’ll be using, what your writing style will be in any literature and what you just want the general look and feel of your branding to be.
In addition to helping you pin down your house style for future marketing, it also ensures consistency across that branding when different people are working on different aspects. Consistency is very important to making you look professional and organised in any field of marketing, but especially a school, where good organisation is the key to impressing parents. ”Also, you can find special education publishing companies at Saddleback”
Your style guide doesn’t need to be a huge document: it could simply be done on a Word Document or Excel spreadsheet – whatever you have available! And be sure to distribute it accordingly to everyone who needs to see it.
2. Redesign your logo
If your logo is a symbol representing who you are, then you should strongly consider changing it at least somewhat with a rebrand. You don’t have to completely overhaul your logo and branding if you don’t want to – and in fact, it may be advisable to either keep some aspects of your original logo or adjust your old one, to keep some consistency. Maybe you could change the colours around, highlight particular shapes or add new aspects, to show that you’re a new and improved version of your school that will retain everything that made you great previously.
But if you are designing a new logo, here are some things you should keep in mind:
Fonts/lettering
Your choice of font will go a long way towards making you look professional – think carefully about which fonts match your overall “vibe” as a school.
Use of colours
As you’ll probably know, much like fonts the colours you choose can have various connotations across the board – some of the best colours for schools are green, which generally implies innovation, new beginnings, yellow, which is a bright, happy colour associated with energy and blue which is often seen to represent loyalty, trust and wisdom– definitely things you want in a school!
Use of symbols
Any logo you create will of course be made up of various symbols. Maybe you could choose something that relates to your school, like something linked in with the local area?
3. Overhaul your website
One of the best ways to communicate the change in branding for your school is to get online properly. Work on developing a new, dynamic website that communicates everything parents and students could want to know about your school – this has the added benefit of making it easier to communicate information too. And communication with parents is always key to making your school seem organised and professional – don’t forget that that applies to any aspect of running a school, not just websites.
Whether you’re setting yourself up online for the first time or are reviving your old site, it’s also important to remember to update any online platforms regularly – an out of date website is almost as bad as having no website at all. And your website doesn’t have to be filled with just the latest information and updates. You could post work for students, further information about anything to do with your school, from its history to its current activities, to information on the teachers. It may also be a good idea to add some kind of “contact us” page so any visitors can get further information if necessary, or have any enquiries answered.
4. Change your signage
If you’re changing your logo, or even something as simple as your colour scheme, then your interior and exterior signage should probably change along with it.
In addition to the same style choices we mentioned when talking about logo design, it may also be a good idea to consider the backing you use for your sign. Plastic is almost definitely going to be your best option for school signs, as other choices like steel will be much more expensive and will look far too heavy.
Stick to your original logo design on any outdoor signage, whilst making any indoor signs clear and easy to read – accessibility is key
5. A new motto?
It goes without saying that every school needs some kind of motto to better communicate the values they want to represent. Much like the visual style mentioned earlier, it may be good to have a brainstorming session with this one and ask yourselves what you truly want to represent as a school. Come up with a few ideas and then go through them all again. Whilst you’re making all of these choices, you could even consult public opinion by creating some kind of survey. In any aspect of branding, an outside opinion will always be handy.
So, in conclusion, there are many ways to make your schools’ rebranding as effective as it can be. These include changing your signage, getting a new motto, developing a style guide for any visual changes, developing a website and redesigning your logo. As an additional point, you should also look at what was working about your previous branding and think about retaining a few of the parts that were good. A rebrand doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul! On the opposite side of things, its important to examine what wasn’t working previously and make efforts to specifically show that those aspects are gone.
