Building a new visual identity for Johns Hopkins’ youngest school
Sector(s):
Service(s):
The Change
52 participants engaged across discovery
5 research methods
A fresh identity for a new era
The Johns Hopkins University School of Education sits within a university full of strong, established brands. As one of the youngest and smallest schools, they felt unrecognized and sometimes overlooked. When a new Assistant Dean of Marketing & Communications came on board, the School was also preparing to move into a new building, marking the start of a new chapter and an opportunity to make their mark.
We partnered with the School of Education to develop a new visual identity strong enough to make its materials instantly recognizable, raise its profile, and expand its presence across campus. We worked within Johns Hopkins University’s broader brand system, which offered plenty of flexibility to create something distinct.
The approach: grounding the work in research
Our discovery process drew on 52 participants across five methods. This included a review of the School’s existing background materials, a market analysis of 20 comparable organizations, and an AI-assisted media scan using Meltwater.
We facilitated a client branding session with 8 participants, fielded an online survey of 37 respondents across leadership, staff, faculty, students, and alumni, and conducted 7 interviews spanning leadership, development, central marketing and design, and student affairs.
Together, these methods triangulated internal context with broad and in-depth stakeholder input, giving us a clear picture of how the School saw itself and how it wanted to be seen.
Finding the story in the building
During discovery, we learned more about the building the School was moving into: a historic Baltimore landmark, once a high school itself, rich in character and architectural detail.
Our design team saw an opportunity to honour this history while showcasing the innovation the School wanted to project.
Education is a framework
Educators offer a window through which people see the world, and the School’s work paves the way for future generations.
When we came across the building’s original architectural drawings, the scaffolding stood out as a natural echo of that idea: education as the framework for a life, just as the drawings were the framework for the building. The building itself is deeply tied to Baltimore, a connection the School takes real pride in through its work in the community. Education provides the blueprint for a life, and the architecture of the new building became the blueprint for the School’s next chapter.
The result
We developed a distinctive brand pattern that derived directly from the building’s original blueprints, resulting in a visual identity rooted in tradition and reimagined with a modern edge.
From this foundation, we built a comprehensive brand system, including a brand guide, custom illustrations, social media templates, holiday cards, and marketing collateral. To bring the identity into the physical space, we also created large-scale environmental graphics for the building’s walls and windows.
Don’t take our word for it
“Be the Change helped us create a brand identity that is true to our school, useful in practice, and visually compelling—bringing greater clarity, cohesion, and modern energy to the way our community of faculty, staff and students tell our story.”
Cole Bingham, Assistant Dean of Marketing & Communication at the Johns Hopkins School of Education.
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