Exploring New Horizons Outdoor Schools
Sector: Education
Services: Full Identity & Collateral Design
Deliverables: Logo system | Basic brand rollout assets (print + digital)
The Brief
Exploring New Horizons is a premier outdoor education program serving over 8,000 students across the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast. Despite its significant reach, the organization’s three campuses operated largely as independent entities, leading to substantial inconsistencies in its visual identity. This fragmentation resulted in a lack of organizational cohesion and diminished brand power.
Original logos
The brand overhaul required a delicate balance:
conceptualizing a new identity that honored the spirit of the original,
creating a unified visual system across all campuses, and
preserving the unique campus-specific awareness that staff and students had built over years of operation.
My Direction
To resolve the fragmentation between the three campuses, I created a modular brand architecture that balances organizational unity with local identity. My goal was to create a visual stewardship of the overall brand while granting each campus the agency to maintain its individual identity.
I reimagined the original sunburst as a "window" to nature—a symbolic invitation for curiosity and exploration for students who may have limited access to the outdoors. To support this new vision, I developed a high-contrast palette of warm, bright colors and grounded the system with bold, playful typography that feels both professional and inviting to students and donors alike.
The Result
Unified Visual Architecture: A tiered logo system that establishes a strong parent brand while preserving the unique silhouettes and "landmark" awareness of each individual campus.
Strategic Imagery: A reimagined visual mark that serves as a welcoming "window" to the outdoors, reflecting the program’s mission to instill environmental literacy and stewardship, empowerment, and team building in students.
Adaptive Brand Application: A streamlined design system built for versatile usage to reinforce brand power—from print annual reports and donor appeals to website, digital newsletters, and social campaigns.
