united charter high schools brand

How do you help a group of education visionaries reimagine charter schools as a destination for future changemakers? 

We are thrilled to be working with Dr. Curtis Palmore and his team at the award winning United Charter High Schools whose ultimate goal is to cultivate local and global citizens who creatively use their knowledge to drive impact in the community after they graduate. 

The essence of the UCHS brand is empowering students. It’s about raising a generation of advocates who think critically about how they receive, reframe and apply knowledge today and tomorrow. Our role was to craft a brand strategy that captured both the philosophy of the umbrella org and the uniqueness of each school. 

From there, we designed a brand identity that would bring that vision to life while also appealing to multiple audiences, from teachers and funders, to parents and, of course, be cool enough for the students to wear. In partnership with Carla Adams @ Duality Strategies, we developed a bold new brand and a custom brand identity system consisting of modular elements—building blocks that could be combined in various ways to adapt to different needs, platforms, scales, complexities, product line extensions, or expansions. This simultaneously maintains the integrity of the new brand and makes it easy for multiple internal teams to use in the main office and each of the schools. 

We are impressed and inspired by the team’s deep knowledge of the education space and the future of education. This manifests in their commitment to academic excellence, rigorous curriculum and project-based learning experiences that spark students’ civic imagination and appetite for advocacy. We value the opportunity to work on an initiative that will affect all of our futures, since it directly aligns with the values of Studio Analogous, where our focus is on design for impact. And here’s what Dr. Curtis Palmore had to say about our partnership: 

“The Analogous team has been an excellent partner with United Charter High Schools. Through their inclusive development process, they helped create a brand concept that truly reflects our schools’ key design elements. Additionally, Analogous led efforts to bring this concept to life with striking visuals and a top-tier website!"

Dr. Curtis Palmore, United Charter High Schools, CEO

RESULTS 

• Five of UCHS's New York City-based high schools were nationally recognized as Top 25 Best NYS Charter High Schools

• In the first twenty-eight days after launch, the site drove one thousand six hundred forty-five enrollment-intent actions and nine thousand nine hundred thirty-two active users

• Organic search accounted for nearly forty-eight percent of all conversions in Phase I

• By Phase II, the site was reaching ten thousand to fifteen thousand active users per month, with fifteen point six percent month-over-month growth

• Organic search outperformed paid search — five hundred twenty-nine vs. three hundred thirty-nine new users in a single week

• Desktop performance score improved from sixty-eight to eighty-four following technical optimization

• High sense of belonging across the school community — from faculty and leadership to students and families — as the brand rolled out across seven schools in different NYC districts

Interested in learning more about navigating the messiness of impact design?  Reach out!