CIC Brand Analysis and Reorganization

The Challenge: Streamline and organize a 20 year old brand, providing comprehensive, customizable templates with a flexible, unhindered spirit.

My Process: Internal brand research and identity development

Stakeholders: Sales team leads, Marketing Director, President, and CEO

Collaborators: Liz Maciorowski, Alex Graziano

Methods + Tools: Surveys, stakeholder interviews, InDesign, Illustrator, GSuite

Results: A cohesive suite of updated templates and brand styles

Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) is a flexible and dynamic workspace. So why should their branding be rigid and prohibitive? During my time as Creative Design Services Lead, it became clear that more cohesion and clarity was needed, but it had to also be flexible and free-spirited.

Brand map

After conducting internal brand research, it became clear that staff wanted better, more complete options for presenting information to different audiences. Existing templates didn’t offer enough variation, so staff had been creating custom solutions for each project or presentation. I developed this brand map to capture and organize the range of styles that were needed.

Core brand slide template

From there, I developed templates for essential areas of the brand map with the support of consultant Liz Maciorowski (pw “portfolio”). Each style maintains the same architecture, fonts, and elements, but with different “flavors” or filters to match the intended emotion and audience. This allows for a deeper structural cohesion while allowing expression and variety on the surface.

These decks are still being rolled out, and will continue to be expanded and developed for different purposes.

I also developed info sheets on certain brand related topics with the support of Tradition Co. These were intended to streamline and empower internal design work, and to be shared with consultants to quickly bring them up to speed on relevant brand standards.