i designed the identity for mci warwick, the media and creative industries course at the university of warwick. the brief was simple in my head: make something that feels like it belongs to warwick, but gives the course a voice of its own.

the logo is the silhouette of the faculty of arts building, the fab, which is where the course lives. it felt right to build the identity out of the place where everything actually happens, and the outline of the building is something anyone on the course would recognise straight away. from there i based the icon and wider branding around what warwick already had, so it would sit comfortably next to the university’s own identity rather than fighting it. i used helvetica throughout and pushed the warwick colours into more saturated versions, so it still reads as warwick but with a bit more energy, which suits a course built around media and creativity.

a big part of the guidelines was sorting out the difference between the logo and the icon. people use the two words like they mean the same thing, but they do different jobs. the logo is the full identity. the icon is the shorthand, the one that works when there isn’t room for everything else. i wrote clear definitions for each and showed where and how each one should be used, so nobody has to guess which one to reach for.

the main choice i made was writing the guidelines as do’s only, with no don’ts. most brand guidelines spend half their pages showing you what you’re not allowed to do, stretched logos, wrong colours, awkward crops. i think that makes people nervous about using the brand at all. i wanted it to work the other way round. if you show people what good looks like, they’ll get there on their own.

beyond the guidelines, i made professional material like powerpoint templates so the brand could actually be used day to day. i also pushed for merch. mci at warwick is one of the top media courses in the uk and students are genuinely proud to be on it, so it made sense to give them something to wear that shows it.

the final version has been sent off to the course for checking. whatever happens with it, it taught me how much of branding is really about communication. an identity only works if the people using it understand it, so the writing and the layout of the guidelines mattered just as much as the design itself.