Design & Branding, Branding, Design for Print, Print, Brochures & Catalogues
Study breaks in the lakes. Higham Hall is an Educational Trust supporting lifelong learning in the arts and humanities through workshops, lectures, residential courses and retreats in the English Lake District.
During discussions with the client, we highlighted the need to clarify their existing brand identity before redesigning the popular Higham Hall course brochure.
Our first step was to evaluate how Higham Hall's current brand resonated with its identity as an establishment, its architecture, and its location. Through visits, discussions, and brainstorming sessions we acquired an understanding of the necessary changes. We devised strategies to propel their brand forward, encompassing various platforms such as print, digital, social media, and on-site presence.
From the beautiful Gothic architecture of Higham Hall, we found great inspiration. Starting with the logo, we created a simple graphic illustration of the front doors of the Hall, balanced with the use of Baskerville, a traditional serif font. To complement Baskerville, which is used as the accent font for headings and similar elements, we paired it with a simple sans serif font, Avenir, for body text.
This simplistic and illustrative approach extended to the creation of graphic assets, inspired by the intricate details found within the Hall. These can be used to add interesting elements to designs, but also to reflect the feel and history of Higham Hall.
Rich, heritage colours were used to create a colour palette with the history of Higham in mind.
Now that the brand foundation had been established, the focus shifted to addressing the course brochure. Together with the client, we reviewed their existing brochure – identifying its strengths and weaknesses, and brainstormed ways to enhance the overall reader experience. Drawing insights from these discussions, we devised a strategic plan to refine the format and redesign the brochure.
We placed utmost importance on making it easy for readers to quickly find necessary information, including course categories, dates, duration, and prices. These details were extracted from the course content to aid accessibility for potential students.
We developed a new layout for the courses, incorporating complementary imagery to achieve a clean and consistent design. Pages were organised by months, with the introduction of course category icons for clarity. Additionally, we consolidated all general Higham Hall information at the back of the brochure for easy reference.
