Center for Language Sciences
CLS: A New Voice
Brand Revival: Breathing Life into the Language Sciences
2024
— Tasked with forging a distinctive personality for CLS, I crafted a unified brand identity, spanning a logo suite, custom typeface, social media visuals, and posters, that feel modern, professional, and unmistakably separate from the broader university.
SERVICES
Brand Identity Design
Project Overview
The Center for Language Sciences (CLS) is an interdisciplinary center supporting research and training in spoken and signed languages across departments at the University of Rochester. It was important for the center to create an identity that felt academic, yet distinct from the broader University of Rochester.
The primary objective was to create a versatile brand that works across digital channels and future merchandise, including consistent templates for lecture series and posters. Equally important was launching a unified visual presence on Instagram and LinkedIn to engage the CLS community and external partners, all while asserting a personality that stands out in the field of natural language.
Approach
Logo sketch, "CLS" built into the columns of Rush Rhees Library
At the outset of this project, CLS lacked a clear visual voice and had an audience largely siloed in linguistics.
The center needed to signal its renewed leadership and its ambition to serve an interdisciplinary language sciences community. My challenge was to create a visual identity that both broke free from linguistic clichés and resonated across diverse fields of language sciences, while honoring the center’s heritage on campus.
Process
I began with broad sketching and ideation across multiple visual territories. From there, I refined the mark and created custom typography.
As the sole designer, I moved from broad ideation—exploring sound waves, globe-shaped letterforms, prism motifs, and MIT-inspired glyphs—to focused refinement, moving away from linguistics clichés and ultimately centering on the Rush Rhees Library silhouette as a symbol of scholarship and local identity. I developed that concept into a clean, adaptable logo, designed a custom typeface to match CLS’s voice, and produced all collateral and guidelines to ensure consistent application across every touchpoint.
Reposition CLS from a linguistics silo to an interdisciplinary hub by building a brand that invites and reflects collaboration across the language sciences community.
Final Design
The final designs combined bold typography, striking contrasts of blue and yellow, and a modular grid system that gave the materials a contemporary, academic presence.
The Rush Rhees-inspired mark functioned as both a recognizable anchor and a flexible element, scaling seamlessly from logos to poster motifs. Dynamic layouts emphasized hierarchy and rhythm, allowing dense academic content to feel approachable and visually engaging. The interplay of geometric type, color blocks, and repeated patterns created a sense of energy and movement, positioning the Center not just as scholarly, but as vibrant and forward-looking.
Product Images
