The Organization

The East Bay Creative Lab (Formerly The Junior Center of Art and Science) is a non-profit after-school program located in Oakland on the shore of Lake Merritt. The Lab fosters community collaboration through hands-on engagement with artistic practice, inquiry-based thinking, and methods of embodied self-expression with a cross-cultural focus. It’s a place where the community can come to learn, collaborate, create, and innovate with best-in-class materials and tools in interactive learning spaces and labs. The Lab is dedicated to providing equitable access to our programs for all youth and their families throughout Oakland and the greater East Bay Area.

The Brief

In addition to the adverse experiences most non-profits encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic, The East Bay Creative Lab faced two devastating fires in their building that left their space unusable. Despite these challenges, they embraced the opportunity for transformation. This became a catalyst for reimagining their name and brand identity, so they contacted TBD* for the work. 

We were tasked with creating a contemporary and flexible identity system that could be

used across a wide range of mediums and design tools in order to help the Lab with their name change and move back into their newly renovated space. This rebrand called for a visual language that could reflect the organization’s cutting-edge and immersive programming, expand the audience they attract to include 7th - 12th Grade students, and retain accessibility for younger kids (K - 6th Grade) as well as Caregivers, Teachers, Donors, and the Lab’s partners.

Our Strategy

After gauging how the organization felt they should be represented, we designed four distinct directions the rebrand could take. Once a decision was made about which direction to proceed with, we fleshed out the visual language to touch on all of their needs, creating a library of assets such as buttons, dividers, and photo overlays to hand over to them. Using this library, we designed a wide variety of final deliverables such as templates for programming, email newsletters, a style guide, letterheads, etc. demonstrating the new identity’s adaptability, versatility, and ease of use.