icon design and campaign creative

CRM Students

icon design and campaign creative

CRM Students

Holywell designs student accommodation 'move-in' campaign and icons for CRM Students

In the summer of 2018 Holywell was invited to pitch to design a move-in campaign for nationwide student accommodation provider, CRM Students. The company was looking for some fresh ideas that could work within their brand guidelines. We were asked to pitch three campaign ideas and, in the end, we pitched four.

The CRM roundel icon concept

The first idea we pitched was to incorporate the roundel element of the CRM logo into icons that are emblematic of student life. We mocked up an initial range of 12 icons that we thought most captured student living. We showed how this concept could be used on envelopes, on the covers of the moving in guides and moving in check lists and inventories.

CRM Students Icons Concept Pitch

CRM Students icons cover ideas

CRM Students photographic covers ideas

The CRM roundel duotone concept

Our second concept involved using some of CRM's photography but using the CRM roundel to create pseudo-duotones.

CRM Students photographic concepts pitch

The CRM broken pattern and typographic concepts

A third concept took the roundel and divided into quarters then used these to to create pattern, while our fourth concept, the 'welcome' typographic concept, used the word welcome to make the materials friendly and incorporated the CRM Students roundel into the word.

CRM Students patterns concept pitch

CRM Students patterns cover idea

CRM Students typographic cover idea

CRM Students typographic concept pitch

Implementing the CRM icon concept for the moving in campaign

The client liked all the concepts, but it was the icon concept that won Holywell the work and this is what was developed for the 2018-19 campaign. It was decided that the typographic concept also had merit so the two concepts were combined and templates were designed for move in handbook covers, envelopes, checklists and inventory forms. There was a consensus that the roundel should not be rotated where possible from its logo orientation and that it should not entirely be enclosed. With this in mind, the roundel was eventually used to replace the 'o' in 'welcome' rather than the 'c'. It was also decided not to use more than one roundel in each icon. Work was also done to standardise the line weight and style of each of the icons.

CRM Students move in handbook cover

CRM Students icon move in envelope and checklist

CRM Students icon move in inventory

Designing more CRM roundel-based icons

The icons were so popular that we were commissioned to design a more extensive range to cover many aspects of student living and that could be used in many other contexts, for signage etc. Below is just a small selection of the many extra icons that were designed.

CRM Student roundel icons

If you need help with logo design or want to devise and design an impactful marketing campaign, please call 01865 242098 or contact us using the button below.