WEDU PBS Rebrand
In late 2019, PBS announced an update to its iconic brand, including a refreshed logo, bold new color palette, and a custom variable font and illustration style. WEDU’s participation in this rebrand launch was delayed, as they also wanted to update the individual station’s own many-decades-old logo. Along with the Brand Manager at WEDU, I was tasked with this logo refresh. The old logo was ‘squished’ and a very thin weight, and became almost illegible at small sizes, which is key because of how important social media avatars and other small applications of the logo are. The ‘waves’ in the old logo were deemed important, both as a way to pay homage to the old logo and as a representation of our West Central Florida’s beautiful Gulf Coast waters.
Color palette
The colors in the 2020 launch of the PBS national rebrand were a custom royal blue and navy blue, along with some secondary and accent colors—here are the RGB versions:
New WEDU logo
…and the new WEDU logo was required to be cobranded: accompanied at all times by the circle icon and “PBS” in the new custom font, as shown. I went through months of rounds and different iterations with the then-Brand Manager and the closely-involved WEDU President/CEO and finally settled on this one, pictured here with the CMYK color codes.
Print assets and 'swag'
Of course a rebrand comes with all new collateral, so I designed multiple letterheads and envelopes for all manner of correspondence.
WEDU PBS’ President/CEO has a small obsession with business cards, and had me design many different options for the backs of his and other employees’ business cards.
One of my favorite aspects of the WEDU rebrand was designing the new folders. For the new WEDU branding style, I started using a gridded collage design, intermixing images from both local WEDU and national PBS programming.
WEDU PBS is big on branded swag, too, so I designed pens, stickers, buttons, magnets, branded journals and notebooks, clothing, and a lot more that’s not pictured here.
Event design / environmental assets
WEDU PBS does a lot of events, so I also designed some environmental pieces, like these pop-up banners. Each one is different, so that if all four are needed for a large event space, there are no repeat images.
Guests and donors at WEDU events love their photo ops, so I’ve also designed a few branded backdrops.
Bonus cool points: I get to meet some really awesome people working in television. For example, here are Julia & Bridget—the hosts of one of PBS’ highest-rated programs, America’s Test Kitchen—in front of MY backdrop (and I also got to work AND hang out with them for a bit, too… very chill and funny ladies!)
Vehicle wraps
Another interesting (if slightly frustrating…) aspect of the rebrand was getting to design three vehicle wraps from scratch. I got some templates from a local printer for the three existing vehicles used by WEDU PBS on location shoots. I used iconic imagery from PBS properties and programs, so that the vehicles would support instant brand recognition when out and about on location shoots and productions.
