Rural Studio is a legendary architecture program deeply rooted in Hale County, Alabama. It is known for its unique design-build curriculum and groundbreaking social work. At Rural Studio, students receive a powerful hands-on educational experience while assisting underserved communities in West Alabama. The national media often portrays Rural Studio as a social justice crusader on a heroic mission to save struggling communities, and this widespread messaging contradicts their core purpose of educating and training socially responsible architects. Through close collaboration with our client, we crafted an authentic brand identity that honored the true mission and values of the program. Rural Studio is now equipped to clearly define its voice and vision in the press.

Our holistic strategy for the Rural Studio brand identity, brand campaign and website was to capture the true essence of the program in a way that resonated with the architecture and design community. The new brand identity is inspired by the iconic Red Barn building in downtown Newbern where Rural Studio holds its architecture classes. This beloved landmark is a symbol of the friendship between the local community and Rural Studio. The logo mark is complemented by a custom-crafted typeface we designed that reflects the humble and hardworking philosophy of the program. We creatively unveiled the new brand in a printed annual newsletter that was mailed to Rural Studio’s most loyal supporters.

As the centerpiece of the brand campaign, we designed and developed a robust, user-friendly website. It seamlessly showcases decades of work through an advanced filtering and sorting system. We designed custom project templates and modules to allow the team at Rural Studio to easily update the website with newly completed projects. Our team also produced an immersive brand video for the homepage of the website. The Rural Studio website not only unifies vast amounts of content in a single, accessible framework, but it is highly visual and functional for users on all platforms.

Our creative work for Rural Studio included many brand extensions. We curated architecturally-driven presentation kits and brochures, designed simple, polished stationery, drafted classic notebooks, produced a line of studio apparel and created branded signage. Every element of the brand initiative established an unmistakable, instantly recognizable identity that Rural Studio could own with pride. We were humbled to work with this group of visionaries, and it was truly an honor to create an authentic, industry-leading brand for a program that is not only shaping the future of higher education but also the field of architecture.