Design Students' Association Branding
A refreshed modular brand identity for a student-run design club.
Timeline: June - July 2025 (8 weeks)
Role: Brand Design Director
Type: Self-Initiated Project
The Design Students’ Association (DSA) is a student-run organization that connects York University Design students through events, workshops, and educational opportunities. For the 2025–26 school year, I was elected to be the DSA’s Brand Director. Through this role, I worked on designing a new brand identity to be used in social media, printed promotional material, and merchandise.
Research + Findings
When starting my design process, I spent a few hours evaluating the previous branding for any improvements to be made. For accessibility, I tested contrast between text and coloured backgrounds and found that some colour combinations did not pass the AA test.
Additionally, I found that the image treatments used made the subjects ambiguous due to heavy filters and effects. With this analysis, I made sure to keep accessibility and clarity at the forefront of my design process.
Experimentation
Through ideation, I found that developing a brand with a variety of colour combinations and assets was the best approach in creating a dynamic identity.
Since most of the marketing materials would be handed off to the DSA Marketing team, I wanted to make sure they had modular assets to mix and match with, to avoid having stagnant and repetitive posts.
I developed 4 icons that represent some of the offerings of the DSA, which include Mentorship, Panels, Workshops, and Social Events.
With these simple shapes, I incorporated them into the brand through patterns and stickers as signifiers for designated events.
These shapes could later be deconstructed and reconstructed into complex iconography for other events hosted by the DSA.
Reflection
This was an exciting summer project that I’ve been wanting to accomplish since first-year of university. Receiving student and executive input helped me to execute a design that reflected the values and spirit of the Design Students’ Association. Moving forward with this brand, I’m eager to see how it evolves through the school year.
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