Alabama Education Lab
brand identity
newsletter headline
Alabama Education Lab, by Alabama Media Group, is a team of journalists dedicated to covering K-12 education through the lens of what we can do to help our state’s kids achieve their potential. I'm incredibly proud to have played even a small part in this mission. I aimed to create a visual identity that would communicate the open, conversational nature of Alabama Ed Lab and inspire participants to continue pressing toward the best possible education for Alabama's kids.
al ed lab.
Education in Alabama is an $8 billion-dollar industry statewide, yet we rank 52nd in math and 49th in reading nationally. Alabama Education Lab exists because its journalists recognize that these problems are solvable, and that the folks in our education system work tirelessly to solve them. The motivation behind Alabama Ed lab is to identify what’s not working and find the wins in our classrooms to help all Alabamians learn from them. The Ed Lab will lead the needed conversations to help our education system be the best for all children in the state.
To create a visual identity that would clearly communicate this mission, I focused in on two ideas:
a) This is all about conversation.
b) The end goal is to “open more doors” for Alabama’s students.
The end result is an open-quotation-shaped mark that uses negative space to indicate an open door. This mark, combined with a positive, upbeat, and almost school-book-esque logotype locks up to deliver a strong message:
“The mountain before us is high, but we can absolutely climb it.”
communication.
One of the primary places this education conversation happens is over email. Alabama Ed Lab’s Newsletter, called “Ed Chat”, will push the latest info to subscribers so they can stay up-to-date on all things Alabama Education. The Ed Chat header image is “authoritative-but-chatty” and strikes the “work-in-progress” chord with a tertiary graph paper element.