University Prep School, a high-performing school with multiple locations throughout the Denver area, was struggling with a website that was outdated, stodgy, and stiff; a website that had slipped out of brand standards and was overloaded with impersonal images that didn’t fit their school’s culture. After a deep dive into a branding exploration project and the resulting rebranding, the school was determined to present a website that would reinforce all the incredible work they do to impact the life of each and every one of their students.
The school serves a diverse population of students who come from families that ascribe to their mantra, that “College Starts in Kindergarten.” The branding refresh meant that it was time to align their website, print pieces, and signage with their commitment to preparing Denver-area students and their families for success in their post-primary educational journeys.
University Prep’s transformation needed to start with a migration to a new website host. Their current platform was clunky and didn’t facilitate the kind of tools necessary to create a modern, engaging site that accurately illustrated the connection U Prep educators create with their students. The school also lacked alignment between their digital and collateral branding, and needed a more coherent message online and off—one that adhered to their refreshed branding guidelines. This meant a complete overhaul of all of their messaging and branding, including their website, print pieces, and signage.
Many of the families that come to U Prep are bilingual, so it was important to the school that the website and print materials remain available in both English and Spanish. The Relish Studio team provided translation services to ensure a consistent, positive experience with access points for all families.
The U Prep team was under a bit of a time crunch, as they wanted their new website up and running in time for the school enrollment period. They wanted a fresh welcome for potential new students and their families to reinforce the school’s culture and focus.
Relish extended University Prep’s “College Starts in Kindergarten” brand ethos into every inch of their website, print media, and signage. This included a custom site design to inject color and tone, typography, and the inclusion of new dynamic, engaging imagery into their online assets.
The Relish team migrated the website from Expression Engine over to WordPress, which provided a much more current, user-friendly interface for U Prep’s staff to be able to facilitate updates. WordPress was a good fit for U Prep moving forward thanks to its large pool of developers, features, and functionalities. Relish also built out a site structure aligned with our recommendations to enable prospective students to better align with the nearest school to improve engagement.
In addition to the site project, Relish created a new brand guide for the organization to keep their materials aligned and on-brand moving forward. Collateral materials – including new business cards, signage, one-sheeters, and more – were designed and printed to ensure consistency of both messaging and material design across all of their outreach touch points.
Relish and U Prep continue to work together to provide ongoing marketing support, maintenance for U Prep’s website and collateral needs to keep things fresh, stay true to the school’s initial vision, and continue to amplify their message in a way that matches brand standards.
“Our team at University Prep is incredibly excited by the work Stu and his team completed for our organization. The re-brand we launched including a fully redone website with new content and a fully revamped visual identity has landed beautifully with a wide range of stakeholders with many compliments coming our way from those who have explored the site. Further, Stu and his team were highly responsive to our needs at each step and timely in all correspondence. Their insight and expertise was a big help as we completed the project and we continue to work with the group on a variety of other efforts because they’re absolutely great.”
– David Singer, Founder & Executive Director, University Preparatory School
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