Branding & Identity Design

BRANDING & IDENTITY STRATEGY DESIGN – Arizona Educational Foundation (AEF)

Branding design strategy to unify and amplify recognition of AEF’s statewide nonprofit programs that embody and reflect statewide excellence.

Identifying the problem:

The Arizona Educational Foundation has seven programs that vastly served different niche statewide audiences, for example the Arizona Teacher of the Year program and the Arizona Spelling Bee. While a single instance of a new logo existed for AEF, this logo did not serve all the use cases and did not offer any distinguishing characteristics of their unique programs, was not a complete brand, and lacking relevance, awareness and improper usage, even with AEF’s long-term 40-year history in Arizona serving public education.

My strategic solution:

As a solution I strategized and executed an expansion of their existing brand, using a fresh approach to their use of colors, considering planned usage and creating alternate orientations. Then, building on this strategy, I created a system of foundational multi-distinguishing marks for each program with uniquely defined logo and identities which have unifying characteristics to connect visually to each other and offer instant familiarity. I created one unifying brand along with new program branded identities for stakeholders to understand how these programs connect.

This solution created in early 2022 united the brand and programs which highlighted awareness that each program exists under the AEF umbrella of nonprofit programs, which resulted in clarity and laid a foundation for future growth. This resulted in a successful umbrella of expanded multiple brand identities nested under AEF that were an instrumental part of their foundational pieces which provided needed clarity, awareness, and continued growth for AEF.

The strategic implementation and impact:

The implementation of this brand strategy enabled an incredibly impactful change to AEF’s communications and marketing, website and media, refreshing the 40-year-old nonprofit and igniting marketing and communications efforts from 2022–2024. Creating these foundational pieces provided consistency and program awareness throughout the state, which resulted in AEF’s overall social media engagement growth spiking 200% increasing reach to one million in two years, and also directly impacting programs like the Arizona Spelling Bee with rapid growth from 200,00 to over 500,000 in participation. Furthermore, the implementation impact lead to an increase of thousands of dollars raised in donations and sponsorships from digital media campaigns encompassing not only website marketing campaigns but targeted and refined SEO/SEM.