Refreshed Change Room Logo
DATE
25.08.2020
The Power of Good Design and Collaboration
At Change Room we are firm believers in open and collaborative innovation, and we are convinced that the generation of good ideas requires not only quality but also quantity. For this reason, we collaborated with Katharina Sussek and Jens Müller, founders of Studio Vista, a Düsseldorf-based digital design agency and their Digital Design class from Hochschule Düsseldorf HSD.
Over the course of two months, 20 bachelor students worked on envisioning the logo and corporate band identity of Change Room. It was fascinating and truly valuable to have people outside our organization reflect on our mission, ideas and activities in the visual way. At the same time, as an organization which hast its roots in Düsseldorf, we found it important to collaborate with local creatives and academic institutions.
Due to COVID-19, the course took place entirely online and neither the lectures nor the Change Room team could meet the students in person. Nevertheless, we were extremely happy about the quality of the students’ work and felt truly inspired by the variety of ideas presented to us during a Zoom session. The natural challenge of having many ideas is, indeed, choosing the best or right one to serve a specific purpose. After several considerations and consultations with the lectures, we chose the design of the 21-year-old Communication Design student, Melina Scheel. With Change Room’s vision being to define new grounds in fashion, we particularly liked Melina’s design due to its futuristic, dynamic and multi-dimensional feeling which implies that sustainability issues in the fashion industry are complex but at the same time her design communicates that sustainable fashion does not have to be mundane or strictly minimalistic. The corporate design is young and eye-catching due to its modern colors, which will surely be great for alternative use on different media such as banners, mobile phone covers, or T-shirts.
In addition to the color pallet, the student designed a unique font “The Change Room Grotesque”. The main inspiration for the font was clothing and fabrics. The typeface runs very thinly into the stem of each lowercase letter to reflect the lightness and texture of a fabric. “But, the overall inspiration for the corporate design was Change Room itself and the topics that the organization represents and discusses. Communication, change in the fashion industry, topics like upcycling, recycling and even the name of the organization was an inspiration. I tried to translate what Change Room stands for in a visual form”, she explained.
"We live in an era where attention is a currency. Good design can help to attract attention and gain trust, but above all it helps to communicate complex issues in a clear way.“
“This course was different because all participants knew from the start that one corporate design would be chosen to be used in “real life“. That is also the reason why I felt very motivated to work extra hard to make something that would be well-received as well as useful in practice. I think it’s great that students, that are still learning, get the chance to show what they can do”, added Melina. “The subject of “fair fashion” has sparked great interest among students from the very beginning and the deeper the involvement with the topic got, the better the designs became. It showed us, once again, how important it is to understand the themes before turning to design“, added the course lectures Katharina Sussek and Jens Müller.
We live in an era where attention is a currency. Good design can help to attract attention and gain trust, but above all it helps to communicate complex issues in a clear way. Digital design experts, Katharina and Jens, urge that these possibilities should not only be left to commercial brands. It is very important that NGOs and social entrepreneurs, in analog and digital media, use professional design as well.
We hope you like our new logo, as much as we do! And if you are looking to upgrade your branding and digital communication strategy, visit Studio Vista yourself! The digital design agency evolved from the merger of the two design offices “optik” and “zweizueins” at the beginning of 2019 by three founders – Katharina Sussek, Andreas Magino and Jens Müller. Each have more than 10 years of professional experience, have realized a wide variety of projects for large and small clients and have won numerous design awards.
Studio Vista, is also a loyal supporter of the Düsseldorf startup community. For the fifth year, it is in charge of the visual appearance of the Startup-Week Düsseldorf, which takes place already next month, from 11th till 18th of September. Under the title “Brand your Business”, the agency is also participating in the program of the startup week and warmly invites founders to their Düsseldorf Flingern office for a personal meeting and consultation.
