Sacred Heart Catholic School in Guelph has relaunched their school’s logo, following a design challenge completed by Wellington Catholic District School Board’s M&T Graphics Factory.
The M&T Graphics Factory district program is a one-of-a-kind course, offering grade 11 and 12 students the opportunity to prepare real design materials for customers.
“M&T provides students with an exceptional experiential learning opportunity in business and technology that is not available in a traditional school setting,” said Katrina Musselman, M&T Graphics Factory instructor. “Students learn about the fundamentals of graphic design and how to effectively apply them to create visual messaging to meet the project needs of various clients. Throughout the semester, each student has the opportunity to enrich their portfolios and resumes through the potential of having their work publicly recognized and reproduced within our greater community.”
The opportunity to design a new logo for Sacred Heart in Guelph came about following successful authorization to be an International Baccalaureate World School offering the Primary Years Programme, making them the only public school to offer the program in the area.
M&T students were given the original Sacred Heart logo and the style guide for the IB PYP logo to help them to understand the components that they could incorporate better.
“The process for students to begin a design solution first begins with a few image-generation exercises, three hand-drawn thumbnails, and finally moving onto Adobe Illustrator to create a draft of their vision. Once the draft is complete,” said Musselman. “Students participate in a critique to show appreciation and to offer suggestions to the designer. The designer makes the adjustments as needed and places the final work into the Dropbox. Once all students have added their designs to the Dropbox, they are collected and sent via email to the client for deliberation and selection.”
Of the designs, student Matthew Burns’ was selected based on his attention to detail and creativity.
“Matthew is a very talented designer who understands the creative process entirely and worked diligently to create his draft for Sacred Heart's new logo,” she said. “To do this, he carefully considered the IB Primary Years Programme logo and the requirements desired by the client, and worked through a series of ideas. His concept was sleek and clean, and in the end, his final version only needed a few adjustments to separate the colours and to add visual weight to the faith components.”
It was especially meaningful for the students to work with the elementary school for this project, as for a many, there is a special connection to Sacred Heart.
“When designs are created by our students for our students, there is an air of collaboration and as such, the students become more invested in the project,” said Musselman. “When our secondary students create projects that may directly connect with our elementary students, the impact is phenomenal as they can better relate to the project, especially if the client is the students' own elementary school. Overall, our students' designs are a celebration of their God-given talents, and this District Program has provided them with an authentic opportunity to showcase their amazing potential at many levels.”
For the school the new design has been extremely well received by the school community, embodying who Sacred Heart is at their core.
“This new logo has been very well received by our community. Those that have seen it are happy that we are bringing faith and new life to our school and showing this through our logo,” shared Vicki Sheehan, principal of Sacred Heart in Guelph. “The new design brings together the core of who we are at Sacred Heart together. The design is done in our school colours, and within the design the flame in the center represents our traditional 'mascot' of the school, the Sacred Heart Flames. This flame burns continuously to represent the wonderful things that Sacred Heart CS has done in the past and will continue to do now and in the future. The heart represents the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the knowledge that we as the Sacred Heart Flames are wrapped in Jesus' love. The cross represents our Catholic Faith and traditions.”
“We want to thank M&T Graphics Factory and especially, Matthew. We know this has been a long process, and there have been many changes. They have been professional and listened to what we wanted and gave us a lot of suggestions. They have truly been a pleasure to work with. I am so excited that this showcases not only Sacred Heart, but also the WCDSB's district programs and secondary students. Thank you!” added Sheehan.
To learn more about the M&T Graphics Factory, please follow along with them on Twitter, at @MTwcdsb.