Untitled - Yomna Ismail

The what

Every year, Conestoga College's Bachelor of Design program holds a competition to design the Gradshow’s branding. In collaboration with Mercedes Turner, we designed the winning concept for the 2023-2024 Graduate Showcase, Untitled. The name symbolized the students' journey throughout the program, starting their 1st year with an untitled empty document, then starting yet another page as they’re graduating. The project included social media design, character design, and print material.

The why

This year, the graduates wanted a unique branding that wasn’t done before in the history of the program. They invited us to explore creative solutions that symbolized their creative journey in the program and sought a fun allusion to terrible nomenclature. They wanted to embrace exploration in the aesthetics of the branding.

The how

“What if we gave each graduate a character?”
“Wouldn’t that be childish?”
“No, it will be fun. Let’s make them blobs”
“Hmm”
“Hmm”
“We can give the characters a hand-drawn feel, that might feel more exploratory to fit the brand”
“And give them eyes that stare at your soul”
“With no mouths”
“Or ears”
“Or arms”
“Okay”
“Ok”

After this conversation, we decided to build the rest of the branding based on the characters, making the graduates the mascots of their grad show. This allowed for full customization of the material and opened the possibility of storytelling throughout the brand application.

For example, this aspect was emphasized in the social media application. The characters were used to make fun and engaging reels that made the audience stop and watch. Speech bubbles were used to add a comic feeling to the branding. The possibilities were endless with what the graduates could do with the characters.

The end

We finished the project by handing them over a playful and fully customizable branding that they can play with throughout their grad show marketing. The graduates enjoyed the uniqueness of their characters and collected funds to make their own merch souvenirs! They got hoodies, plushies, keychains, and even customized lanyards with their characters printed on them. You can see the rest by checking out their Instagram and website archives!