Context / Overview

The English College in Prague is an international school founded in 1994, with a strong history linked to freedom, opportunity, and English-medium education in Prague. The school has strong values and a meaningful background, but its existing brand identity did not fully communicate this in a clear, modern, or student-centred way.

As a team, we worked on a brand refresh for ECP, using research, stakeholder meetings, competitor analysis, and a school visit to understand what the brand needed to become. The project focused on making ECP feel more contemporary and clear, while still keeping the heart and heritage of the school.

Mission and Vision

The existing mission and vision of the school were a little unclear. We gathered the current working statements (taken from ECP's current brochure and website) and refined them to be concise and purpose-driven. When visiting the school, we carried out a values workshop with various stakeholders, including staff, students and parents. With this information, we narrowed down our findings into five new values that reflect ECP.

Competitor research

We completed a competitor matrix to look at the logos of 20 competitors, half of which are IB schools, with the other half being schools that share a similar age demographic. When placing ECP on this matrix it became clear that the school was sitting on the wrong side of the traditional vs contemporary spectrum, so moving forward with the rebrand we aimed for ECP to match their contemporary approach to education by adopting this within their brand identity.

User needs

ECP has several different stakeholder groups, so the design needed to work for different people at the same time. Parents needed clear, trustworthy, and concise communication. Students wanted more student voice, more personality, and merchandise that felt more wearable and relevant. Teachers needed a system that could help bring in new students, support clear wayfinding, and make the school feel more accessible.

Logo

We explored a variety of different concepts while sketching, which goes into two directions, logos referencing the crown that featured in the original logo and logos that used door-like iconography, in reference to ECP's iconic blue doors.