Objective
Our objective in the Marketing & Communications Office (MCO) at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), was to bring our innovative, accelerated, online, bilingual programs, and other programs under a broader brand umbrella called, 'CNM My Way.' Our strategy was to provide flexible positioning of promotion for the various solutions that CNM has now and will have in the future. Our goal was to position CNM My Way programming as the leading provider of flexible and innovative education programs.
Project Scope
Our process for 'CNM My Way' began with an exploration of the brand's essence and it's connection to New Mexico's workforce needs. We delved into the heart of what makes this brand special - flexibility, convenient learning, affordability, industry relevance, transferable credits, personalized support. Drawing visual identity inspiration from Employer Sponsored Education, Online Learning, and Accelerated Learning businesses; we developed a hand-crafted comprehensive brand strategy that included hand-lettered logo concepts, a custom font, and engaging interior graphic styles that represented student personal property: notebook paper, highlighters, sticky notes, and various hand drawn markups. We polished off the visual structuring with target industry and diverse student aligned photography. Each element was carefully crafted to reflect the brand's commitment to providing flexible, convenient, personalized, affordable, industry-relevant, and various solutions that are leading providers for career advancement.
Process & Inspiration
The creative brief for 'CNM My Way' was centered around crafting a brand that embodies the essence of "Learning, Your Way." The client, Innovative Programs Academic Affairs leadership, envisioned a brand that communicates effectively on how you can earn degrees and certificates in a fraction of the time through CNM My Way, comparatively to how long it takes to complete a traditional program. My design approach aimed to capture this vision through a mix of hand-crafted graphic styles, and student personalized interior elements. The CNM My Way brand needed to standout in a fresh new way compared to industry competitors while still delivering a caring and personal approach that remains true to the roots of supporting every individual student's needs.
Conclusion
MCO and I introduce a new brand called CNM My Way that is now home to all innovative, accelerated, online, and bilingual programs. The problem experienced prior, was effectively marketing these programs in a concise method of communicating their effective degree and certificate pathways for students. Our solution was to create a new identity for all of these programs under one brand name 'CNM My Way.' This initiative brought cohesiveness and flexibility when marketing these programs. We enabled the programs to communicate more effectively about their offerings to prospective students with a new visual identity system I hand-crafted for the new tone, look and feel. Ever since the rebrand, CNM has seen fluidity and effective communication with advertisement that has boosted enrollment and student interest in our online, accelerated, and bilingual programs.