Level 3 Graphic Design students at West Herts College recently partnered with a local charity to reimagine its brand identity as part of a live brief.
Liberty Tea Rooms & Community Hub is a local charity bringing together social, financial, and mental wellbeing services, based in Hemel Hempstead. They describe themselves as a “community run, community supported and community focused tearoom for people to get together, chat and make new friendships.”
In this exciting project, students worked to design a unified brand identity that brings these services together, using the existing tree logo as a starting point. Students were tasked with making their outcomes feel rustic, vintage, and quirky - evolving the brand in a way that respects its history while creating a fresh, cohesive, future-focused identity.
The winning logo was created by Ciara Blackwood, who describes being inspired “by the values of the charity and its focus on a welcoming and approachable environment” and used the symbolism of the tree to create an inclusive and meaningful design.
“My design represents community, support, and growth. I focused on a simple and minimalistic style with warm colours to convey a welcoming and friendly impression to reinforce my meaningful brand identity.”
She also says that being chosen as the winning designer has given her “motivation and confidence to develop my design skills and apply them in further depth to create designs which have a real impact.”
Richard Evans, CEO of Liberty Tea Rooms & Community Hub says of the project:
“Liberty Tea Rooms was extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with West Herts College and to provide the students with a live brief experience. It was clear that the students worked hard and genuinely attempted to capture the heart and ethos of Liberty within their designs, which we greatly appreciated.”
Thank you to Richard and the team at Liberty Tea Rooms & Community Hub for working with us and our students. Live briefs like this one are invaluable experience for our students to develop their portfolios and build confidence for pitching a design concept to a real client.
If you’d like to find out more about our Graphic Design course, click here to head to the course page.