The Old School House - Clever Jane

The Old School House Arts Centre

ART IS IN SESSION

Located in the heart of Qualicum Beach village, The Old School House Arts Centre is an iconic community landmark, with a deep history of supporting and nurturing the arts. Based out of a beautiful heritage building, it is a regional hub for artists, with exhibition spaces, resident artist studios, classrooms, and events, and has been a gathering place, for both members and visitors alike for decades. As they look towards the future, with changing demographics and shifting markets, they wanted to make it more inclusive for an increasingly diverse audience who value and support the arts. Their team believes that art is for everyone and everyone belongs, and that value formed the foundation of our work.

THE CHALLENGE

Along with our collaborators at Majorette, we embarked on a deep dive into their purpose, vision and values. We knew it was essential to create a sense of place; to create a visual link between the building itself and the programming within it. We needed to establish their role as progressive leaders in their industry, and engage current and future members and donors, in order to secure support now and in the future. It was important to honour the past while bringing the organization forward into the future. And, most importantly, they wanted to ensure that everyone in the community, as well as visitors, felt welcome to come in anytime, wander the halls, and get involved.

disciplines

CLEVER JANE
Art Direction
Strategy
Identity Design
Print & Content
Brand Guidelines

MAJORETTE
Strategy
Brand Messaging

The words "ART IS IN SESSION" in yellow overlayed over top of a collage of old film photography full of people from the 90s to 2000s making art at TOSH. These images are treated with a bitmap image effect in purple and blue.

HOW WE DID IT

The Mark & Design

Before

After

Horizontal Logo

Monograms

Our goal was to create a timeless mark that embodied sophistication, playfulness, a touch of eclecticism, and an artisanal, ink-like quality. Drawing from the building’s architectural elements we pulled shapes that referenced the windows and picture frames that line the walls. The logotype is set in a customized version of VJ Type’s SUD, a theatrical and expressive font. In replacing one of the “O’s” in school with a square, we subtly double-down on the windows and frame concept. We developed a unique visual language, one that incorporates geometric shapes, in addition to typography, imagery, and colours that work together to create a bold aesthetic while capturing The Old School House’s character and charm. This concept carried over into a series of monograms that utilized TOSH, an acronym already embraced by the community.

BRAND COLOURS

When you think of The Old School House, you think of yellow. Integrating the iconic buttery shade into their brand colour palette was a simple and deliberate way to create a visual connection to the house. We then introduced additional colours to reflect the building’s interior, with complementary shades adding depth and contrast. Purple, khaki, orangy red, burgundy, and black were put in place across the brand spectrum, helping to define and categorize their brand system.

PHOTOGRAPHY

We are strong believers in the power of photography in developing brand identities. With limits on budget, we needed to get crafty. We scoured their archive of historical photographs from the 1980s through the 2000s, and applied a monochromatic print treatment in their brand colour palette. This treatment aligned perfectly with the juxtaposition of old and new that runs throughout their identity, deeply aligned with the messaging, and gave them a cohesive, visual language they can apply to old and new photography going forward.

"ART ELEVATES LIFE" text in yellow overlayed over an image of a man drawing at The Old School House with a duotone bitmap image effect in maroon and orange.

Image of two people paining with text saying AtThe OldSchool House,art is foreveryone, and Everyone belongs

"Art is alive in this house and its energy pulses in every nook and cranny." over top of a house graphic with a bitmapped orange image of The Old School House inside of it.

People having fun around a piano. In this house, we bend the rules,party on school nights, and question everything

The words "Art Is in Session" with a woman painting on the street in the town of Qualicum Beach.

"The Old School House welcomes art-lovers, artists looky-loos, dilly-dalliers and everyone in between." text

SOCIAL MEDIA & PRINT DESIGN SYSTEMS

We developed a versatile brand system that is adaptable to various mediums like brochures, posters, social media, and online platforms. We then created a series of templates that clearly distinguish program categories. Integrating these templates into Adobe Express (similar to Canva) enables their team to easily create marketing pieces themselves, and ensure everything looks cohesive and professional. In an age of passive scrolling, providing information with clarity is key. Our framework is designed to be shared, scanned and interpreted with ease.

For the analog crowd, we also created a printed rack card, Music on Sundays Concert series brochure, and a brochure for workshops and classes.