Curry College Branding Initiative

What is a brand?

A brand is what an institution stands for in the hearts and minds of the people with whom that institution is trying to connect. It is more than a logo, a color palette, a name, a tagline, or a campaign. A brand is cumulative—the result of all the touch points in a shared journey with each individual. 

Our goal is for Curry College to authentically live and express our brand in such a way that we connect with individuals who are attracted to the essence of who we are. That connection promotes understanding, affinity, and ultimately drives engagement with Curry College.

Brand building requires mindful intent and a long-term commitment. We want to speak and act with consistency, clarity, and conviction to create a positive brand experience for our community.

Curry partnered with Carnegie Higher Education in the Fall of 2022 to develop and launch a new brand for the College. The Marketing and Communication, Enrollment, and Admission teams have worked closely together with Carnegie on this exciting and important work!

The following are just some of the key pieces of this project.

Identifying Curry’s Personality

Carnegie’s work centers around identifying an authentic “personality” of the College, as if it were a human entity. The branding work began with gathering input on who we are and who we want to be as well as gaining a data-informed understanding of how Curry College is currently perceived in the competitive market. This work included:

• External perception research
• Discovery interviews with leadership team
• Internal survey
• Undergraduate and graduate competitive analysis
• Facilitated workshops with students, staff, and faculty

In the end, three personality types were chosen that best reflect who we are:

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From this work, we then devised strategies to reintroduce the College to its key audiences and constituencies.

Admission Marketing Campaign

The majority of the brand work and budget focuses on marketing Curry’s undergraduate programs to prospective students and families. During this academic year (2023-2024), part of this work is simply raising awareness of what Curry is all about as the initial research showed that many people just don’t know about us or have vague ideas of what we do as a College. The rest of the work is very specific and targeted marketing to high school students who we think would thrive at our school.

Admission Campaign Concept:

This work began Spring 2023 into Fall 2023. Printed collateral development for Fall 2024 began in late Fall 2023. The campaign theme is “Made For You.” It is typical for colleges to use each unique campaign/theme for a few years. Curry’s latest theme was “Become/You Belong Here.”

Here are some examples of the design look and feel we developed for the “Made For You” campaign:

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Digital Marketing Campaign:

This is an extensive campaign that focuses on Google Ads and various social media channels. We are using video and still photography content in these ads.

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Logo Development Work

Curry’s wordmark/logo was an outdated font called Trajan, a font that was developed in late 1980s. We worked closely with Carnegie’s creative design team with the goal of changing to a more modern/sleek design to bring Curry’s brand up to date.

Trajan Wordmark:

The Process:

• Deep dive discovery with two focus groups of faculty, staff, and students
• 150+ rough sketches presented to Curry work team
• Three rounds of sketch refinement to get down to the final nine
• Qualitative testing of nine marks (students, staff, and faculty participants led to significant changes to direction of logo)
• Refined to four marks based on those qualitative results
• Feedback from Curry work team guided the refinement of four final marks
• External public quantitative testing of four logos
• Quantitative results guided the elimination of one mark, the blending of two marks, and the further refinement of the fourth mark, resulting in two final marks
• Internal survey on final two marks
• Results weighed heavily to the chosen mark, with 80% of students, 75% of staff, and 62% of faculty favoring this mark.

New Wordmark/Icon (2024):

New Wordmark/Icon - Explained:

The modern and sleek design of this new icon/wordmark gives Curry College's brand a more contemporary look. The new wordmark was created using the Ringside font family, and the "Infinity C" icon represents the endless caring, support, and community offered at Curry. The upward trajectory of the angled edges in the "Infinity C" and "R"s, along with the upward-facing arrow in the "G" add not only an air of tradition to this modern design, but signify Curry's forward-thinking, mission-driven approach to improving the lives and experiences of our students every day.

Note that the seal (or crest) of the College will remain, however, it will be reserved for exclusive use by the President’s Office and for formal events, such as Convocation and Commencement.

Curry College Seal:

Athletics

During this process, we made the decision to retain certain elements of Curry’s former brand. This includes the athletics logo, using the interlocking "CC" - Many colleges and universities have separate sub-brands for their athletics departments, which is an important part of a school’s overall branding strategy.

Current Athletics Logo:

Beginning this summer 2024, we will begin work on the athletics mascot. This work will continue into the fall and will include Curry community-wide input from students, staff, faculty, and alumni. We hope to have a final decision by Spring 2025.