January 2nd 2025.

It all started with a tableside chat conversation.

Amy, the president of MISC, shared her frustrations about the lack of consistent branding for her university's information security club. She described how promoting events often involved scrolling endlessly through Canva templates, only to end up with designs that felt random and disconnected. The result? Inconsistent visuals and a diluted brand identity.

I immediately saw the untapped potential.

MISC needed more than just design templates—it needed a cohesive, expandable brand identity that would streamline their promotional process while reflecting their unique values and appeal to students.

Understanding the Problem

My first step was research. I wanted to truly understand MISC’s current brand and the challenges they faced. This phase revealed a core set of issues:

• Inconsistency: Social media and promotional materials, as well as the website all used various color palettes, fonts, and templates, which made it difficult to recognize MISC’s visual identity.
• Lack of clarity: Without a defined brand archetype, the club struggled to communicate its identity effectively.
• Time inefficiency: Team members spent too much time deciding on templates, which could be better spent elsewhere.

From these insights, I established two key goals for the new branding:

1. Simplicity and accessibility: The branding should be easy for the team to use and reference.
2. Youthful appeal with cybersecurity themes: The design should resonate with students while embodying the dynamic, cutting-edge nature of the cybersecurity field.

Building the Identity

To bring this vision to life, I developed a grid method to define MISC’s brand archetype. Using a matrix of adjectives that described the club’s values—like innovative, secure, and collaborative—I identified inspiration for colors, themes, and design elements.