branding logo design MindWorks Collaborative
MindWorks is an organization that works to further the opportunities for BIPOC students with disabilities, and the teachers who educate them. I helped MindWorks Collaborative create a meaningful identity for their brand, after a few years of using a placeholder logo. I also worked with the team to create a refined color palette, typography, and brand guidelines. It was important to the team to create a mark that was flexible in application and easily recognized.
The logo concept
The logo concept is centered around the idea of connection and collaboration. MindWorks is the connector to so many things, whether it’s connecting families of students to the help they need, or connecting teachers to the resources they need. The connected ascender and descender of “mw” work as a submark and as a larger part of the logo. By leaving a gap within the word, we are implying movement and also creating a lockup that looks great in color and black and white.
Style guide
I created an updated brand style guide for MindWorks, incorporating brand rules, new color palette and typeface, and layout examples
The process
Before & after
MindWork's original logo was intended as a placeholder, but they did like a few things about it: the simplicity of a wordmark, and some of the original colors. However, it didn't reduce well or have different lockups. There was also a secondary mark that was used inconsistently and not connected with the primary logo. These were all issues we solved with our rebranded logo.
Design exploration
As a part of the design exploration process, I explored several design concepts and overall thematics as I worked. Some prominent themes were: many things coming together towards one goal, connection + collaboration, and strength + support visualized through the icon of an elephant (inspired by the original brand submark). These are a few of my favorite logos that didn’t make the final selection.