NU Brand Bootcamp: Week 2— WAVE Productions

Welcome to the NU Brand Bootcamp, a personal project I am undertaking this quarter. Every week, I will explore and redesign a logo of a Northwestern University student organization as a means to grow as a designer and understand what it takes to truly build a brand.

Stuco, or the “student theatre coalition,” is an umbrella organization encompassing nine “theatre boards” that are responsible for the majority of theatre productions on campus.

Each board also has their own logo, ranging in style and quality…

Inexplicably, both the Stuco logo and the’s board logo must be displayed simultaneously.

Recently, I was stuck with an idea. “What if I could unify all the theatre boards under a unified Stuco™ brand?” I got to work, only to be stalled under my other commitments like classwork and sleep. And so, I refocused my energy on one particular board… (for now 😉)

Wave Productions

Wave exists to share the stories of the past and present in order to open the door to a better future.

For a group with the slogan “infinite, eternal”, their visual brand seems to be stuck in 1987.

I set out to reimagine how Wave’s mission statement and personality could be visualized in a way that captures the timelessness of their mission as well as the quirkiness of their executive board members.

Making Waves

I started with a typographical approach, attempting to merge the infinity loop with letterforms.

I obviously gave up very quickly.

Then, I had an epiphany — perhaps the infinity loop does not have to be part of the brand. After all, if the “beauty of theatre” lies in the ephemeral, why brand it as something infinite? With my second set of sketches, I wanted to capture the idea of an ephemeral moment making lasting waves.

Wave Productions: messy and magical

I liked this new direction a lot, and moved onto vector prototypes.

Happy with the look of the graphic, I selected Apercu as the accompanying typeface. In addition to picking a bright blue for color, I created separate element to accompany the logo on Wave communications to further its distinctiveness and add a sense of whimsicality back into the brand.

The accompanying graphic element — the “waves” — were created from liquifying a series of lines.

I’m quite happy with how everything turned out, although I wonder how the logo would fit into a wider Stuco branding revamp…but that’s an adventure for another time. As always, thank you for supporting me and my project, and I’ll leave you with a much anticipated before and after comparison!

Trippy.

Let me know what you think!

Jason Yuan

Visual & Experience Designer
Theatre/Communications Junior, Northwestern University
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All work produced as part of this series should be viewed as work in progress instead of finalized rebranding proposals. If an organization wishes to pursue any of the solutions formally, please contact me directly!