Upon visiting the college I was struck by the overwhelming sense of trust and respect between faculty and students. This feeling stayed with me and shaped my initial thoughts for a reimagined Oaklands brand.

My research and creative exploration phase quickly solidified my hopes of visualising this feeling of a circle of trust. Looking deeper into the symbolism of circles I discovered that the College’s values almost perfectly mirrored the symbolism of the circle.

With multiple business units, and plans to grow further in the future, the new visual language needed to be flexible, able to change the tone of the conversation depending on situation and audience. Scalability and flexibility were central to the new brand system.

With a desire to attract an international audience, a campaign approach that simply referred to the college as ‘Oaklands’ was created to help recognition. The campaign literally places Oaklands at the heart of the conversation to quickly align them with values and sentiments of the college.

The college’s sporting academies, the Oaklands Wolves, are nationally renowned with many of their alumni going on to compete globally and/or continue their sport and education in top US colleges.

The heads of the academies wanted a new identity, one that would serve as a badge of honour for teams to play for and also bring the academies visually closer to the college.