Overview

The College of Architecture, Visual Art & Design (CAVAD) at California Baptist University is one of the largest Christian art and design schools in the United States. They desired a fresh brand identity that would embody their cutting-edge programs and strength as a premiere school within the industry, while making things feel clean, modern, and well-established.

We partnered with the school's dean, Dirk Dallas M.F.A., to bring this overhaul to life. This started with not just giving their old logo a facelift, but a complete overhaul.

Wordmark

While this rebrand involved a complete redesign of everything from typography to colors and marks, we wanted to pay homage to both the university at large, and CAVAD's visual heritage.

We accomplished this through an element that has become integrated throughout CAVAD's design system, and that has been affectionately named "the notch." This mark, as seen below, finds its origins in the four shapes that were found in CAVAD's original logo. By taking these elements and using them in various ways, they can be made to create serif-like forms, as seen in the logo, in addition to being referenced in other parts of the design.

California Baptist University's logo has a unique but similar design to it, featuring a series of notch shapes that knock out negative space in their logomark, rather than adding to it. When pairing these two logos together, one gets a visual symbol that CAVAD is a "piece of the puzzle" within the larger university, represented by the way that CAVAD's positive notches fit within the negative notches of CBU's logo.

Results

The new CAVAD logo was debuted at a Division 1 CBU basketball game, sponsored by CAVAD. It was received extremely well, and is featured across promotional materials and all over CBU's campus during events, shows, and the like. It has been a crucial part of elevating the status of the College of Architecture, Visual Arts & Design within both academic and arts & design circles.