WorldStrides Brand Book
Client: WorldStrides
Sector: Travel, Education
Role: Brand guidelines, visual strategy, art direction, layout
Overview
WorldStrides is an educational travel company with an established brand. Their internal team had been revising the brand guidelines and needed help finishing key sections and exploring new ways to express the brand visually.
I created new sections of the brand book, expanded the graphic system with new patterns, shapes, and iconography, reworked the typographic systems, built libraries, and set the standards for photography and motion.
Result
A comprehensive 93 page brand book including detailed guidelines and a collection of examples of design execution. Ultimately, an in-house team of designers equiped and ready to carry out the guidelines.
Brand new patterns and refined shapes
WorldStrides’ in-house team had begun to use shapes for layout, but the shapes were collected over time and not made to relate to each other. I worked to find the commonality between them, refine the forms, and define clear guidelines for how to use them.
I had been asked to also create patterns that could be used to add more graphic tools for the design system. Below are some of the final pages from the brand book that relate to the patterns and shapes.
A more appropriate typography
The team had been using Tiempos Text for headlines and titles, but using weights inconsistently. They were using a mix of uprights and italics, which was a nice way to add some personality. All body copy was set in DIN, a typeface with many more weights and widths than they needed, and a font without the kind of personality that their ‘Tiempos’ font demanded.
I proposed the implementation of the ‘Tiempos Headline’ light and light italic weights. The headline version of the Tiempos font was a subtle shift that didn’t require uprooting the entire brand. It’s more appropriate for headlines as it was specifically crafted for that purpose.
To deal with the challenges of DIN, I suggested the use of Libre Franklin, a font with a more human feel. Libre Franklin solved the other concerns as well as eliminated the need for an alternate body copy font. The following image was presented to show the differences in headings and blocks of copy.
The Type Ramp
Below is a look at the page from the final brand book. This shows a comprehensive look at how Tiempos Headline and Libre Franklin should be used.
Applying the brand system
Once the additional elements were in place, I worked to create examples for layout in digital and print applications. The following examples are designs created by myself and by the in-house design team, using the guidelines I was scoped to make.
Additional Credits:
Creative direction by Paul Kidd, additional design from the WorldStrides internal design team