When I lived in St. Louis I worked for the German School Association of Greater St. Louis. It was an organisation that I was really proud to be a part of. We taught German culture and the language to students every Saturday morning. My classes were children’s classes, but we also had adult classes. But this post isn’t about how great my experience was or how great the organisation is. It’s about something that really bothered me about the company. The Brand Design! From the logo to the Website, I was never really happy with it. I just thought it could be better. I mean take a look…
Their Current Website
FIRST OFF THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS PROJECT, BUT I WANT TO SHOW THE PROGRESS I’VE MADE. 😀
I decided that I should do something about it even if it was just for me to see what redesign I could accomplish. So I began to sketch.
I tried to think about the various sides of the German school and it’s mission. I thought about how they are trying to show the traditional while enticing students to be curious and explore the modern side of German culture. This lead me to the two design channels.
I then decided to bring the designs into Adobe Illustrator and bring them to life a little more.
German has a great deal of “traditional” and “modern” typefaces that are really attributed to movements and the culture. I started with blackletter fonts and thought that might be too traditional for a school in 2015. So I looked to Bauhaus and tried to draw inspiration from there. Looked at classic Bauhaus posters. I ended up really liking the layered G & S look, but still not sure if that is right for the school.
I started to delve into their website and critiquing what worked and what didn’t. My comments are on the website below. I’m going to need to spend more time working on this, but I think I’ve made great progress so far.
Just a little sKATterbrained. 