SDSU CORAL Research Lab Branding
A Brand matching the Capacity Building Service for Change and Impact.
When SDSU Professor Crystle Alonzo came to us, she had big ideas for her research lab and understood the need for a professional, cohesive branding appearance to go after it. SDSU Coral Lab is a forward-thinking, innovative clinical research lab that wants to disrupt the system and cause change and true impact. It helps future clinicians, families, and service providers who are overwhelmed and burdened by navigating the system to best support children with language and literacy deficiencies. Their main approach is to actively engage with all stakeholders (Schools, Families, and the Community) throughout the entire research process, building up their capacity so they can succeed and live empowered and fulfilled lives.
Brand Clarity First
Branding an academic research lab is not very common, but equally important as any other business, especially considering the stakeholders they are trying to reach. And just like with any B2B company or corporation, we first entered our brand discovery intensive Clearly Branded Process to uncover all the needs for the Coral Lab and ways we can best convey its brand personality and attract the audience they want.
What We Learned
We learned that the system seems broken with all its drama and bureaucracy that delays the support many of these children and families need in their early years. Crystle understood that she has to intervene earlier, help the kids before they start school, and change the path of struggle BEFORE they develop behavioral problems. She needs to get out of the silo of academic research and work in collaboration with the local community. This might mean bold moves, unconventional methods, and grassroots initiatives. The brand should embody that rebel attitude however should also reflect the means to get to these goals, which are much more gentle, subtle, and inquisitive. Therefore the visual approach has to be open, friendly, and inviting to the collaborators and community and appeal to a broad spectrum of people, including kids and their families and potential investors.
Impact
- CORAL Lab becoming a local resource and establishing a trusted voice for children and their families with language & literacy difficulties
- Inspired and encouraged other academic labs on campus to branch out and do the same
- Empower students of CORAL Lab to continue to build out the brand and succeed on their own
Services
- Brand Clarity & Strategy
- Brand Foundation
- Brand Identity
- Collateral Design
Clarity Report
Attaching Meaning to Letters and Marine Invertebrates.
The name CORAL, standing for Comprehension Opportunities in Reading and Language, gave us plenty of inspiration for the visual appearance of the logo. But before we started designing, we had to ask a few questions first. What exactly is CORAL Lab, what are they trying to accomplish, who are they trying to reach, and how can we best explain the acronyms and connection to ocean coral. We entered a period of discovery and recorded all findings in the “Brand Clarity Report,” along with a list of Top 10 Recommendations. Only now we could create a custom brand that reflects the CORAL Lab Foundation and Personality.
Brand Development
Rebel Brand with a Friendly Demeanor.
With a solid brand foundation and a clear vision for the brand, we were ready to create the logo and supporting brand system. CORAL Lab’s main brand archetypes were the Ruler, Rebel, and Caregiver. The Ruler for being a trusted resource in the community, the Rebel for being innovative, side-stepping the conventional system and making bold moves, and the Caregiver for encouraging upcoming SLPs and supporting children and their families. The brand had to embody these three opposing attributes, being disruptive, authoritative, and gentle.
To capture this aesthetic, we started with moodboards to narrow the look and feel, moving on to sketches, loose logo comps, and iterations of refined logo marks.
The final logo mark depicts a stylized coral, representing community and teamwork, an intricate wide-reaching network of connections, creating an interdependent support system. The coral is divided into two halves mimicking the human brain, which also has the texture of coral and is the center of language and comprehension. The overall shape is a circle, standing for its holistic approach, completion, continuous movement, and connection.
Brand Style Guide
Capacity Building is the Brand Flag
Since CORAL Lab is all about Capacity Building and Empowerment, be it for upcoming clinicians, Labs in other academia, or Families, it was important to us to give Crystle and her lab students all the tools to continue to build out the brand and succeed on their own. We created a detailed brand guide that is easy to understand and execute and set up various templates on Canva for a coordinated, consistent, and compelling brand presence at every touchpoint.
