Southwest University
of Visual Arts

About the project

Southwest University of Visual Arts (SUVA) is a private, not-for-profit art college, with campuses in Tucson, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was employed as an in-house designer and faculty member for SUVA on a full-time contract.

The brief

I was asked to create a brand new identity for the university, along with a new website design, marketing materials, business stationary and interior and exterior signage.

The challenge

SUVA’s previous brand was inconsistent and dated, with different logo designs and overall styles being used across a variety of media. This lack of a coherent identity was causing problems with their wider engagement and they wanted a long-lasting, distinguishable brand to help with this. The second issue was that their website was visually dated, had no CMS and lacked the information it needed to be a resource to current and potential students.

The solution

The first step in the process was to design a new brand identity for the university. The aim was to create a brand identity that encapsulated the ever-changing nature of the university in a visual form. The movement in the triangles is a visual representation of the fluctuating and energetic nature of the university and the students. The angular shapes can work well in creating spaces in which to showcase students work (see the print applications below) and gives the overall brand identity a cohesion across multiple media.

When it came to redesigning the website, I first focused on adjusting the site map to make the navigation more intuitive and easy to use. I redesigned some key pages which get a lot of traffic; the homepage, program pages and text heavy pages (such as scholarships.) I designed modules that would be used across the site, and worked with a development company that coded these modules and built the framework of the WordPress site.

I combined existing website copy alongside information from the catalogue to make the website the ‘go to’ place to visit to find relevant information on programs and scholarships. I used tabs and accordions to layout information in digestible chunks, and presented student artwork front and centre for each program.

Another element the previous website lacked was distinct call-to-actions; I made sure that the new website design gave students a prompt in what to do next (either to apply online or see other courses.)