Newcastle-under-Lyme School was preparing to mark a major milestone in its history, celebrating 425 years since the school was founded in 1602.
At the same time, the school was looking ahead through A School for Life, its Strategic Development Plan for 2025-2032, which set out the school’s ambitions for the years ahead. Together, these two initiatives created an opportunity to reflect both the school’s long-standing heritage and its future direction.
Our brief was to create two distinctive visual identities that could each stand confidently on their own and still feel connected to the established NULS brand.
The identities needed to balance heritage with modern relevance, work alongside the existing NULS branding while remaining clear and recognisable across everything from digital communications to large-format applications.
The two identities represent different moments in the NULS story, but they needed to feel connected by more than simply sitting under the same school brand.
We developed both identities in parallel, considering how each could communicate its own message while retaining a clear relationship with the established NULS identity. This gave each concept the freedom to develop its own character, while creating enough consistency for them to work naturally alongside one another across the school’s communications.
Celebrating 425 years called for an identity that recognised the school’s history without feeling like it was looking backwards.
We used the familiar NULS roundel as the starting point, building the anniversary mark around an established part of the school’s identity. The ‘425’ becomes part of the form itself, creating something that feels recognisably NULS while giving the milestone its own distinctive presence.
A subtle sense of movement through the identity helps shift the focus from where the school has been to where it is going, reflecting the generations of pupils NULS has supported and the futures it continues to shape.
The result is a celebratory identity rooted in the NULS brand, but with enough character and flexibility to mark such an important moment in the school’s story.
A School for Life was already an established part of the NULS brand, so our role was to build upon what was there. We refined the existing motif to give it more balance, personality and presence, carefully adjusting the spacing and typography while keeping the character that made it recognisable.
The words ‘School’ and ‘Life’ were given greater emphasis, helping bring the meaning behind the message to the forefront. Subtle changes to the lettering also introduced a stronger sense of movement and individuality, reflecting the journey pupils take through school and the wider personal development that happens along the way.
The result is an evolution of A School for Life that feels more confident and distinctive, while still sitting naturally within the wider NULS brand and everything it already stands for.
NULS now has two distinctive brand identities that support both a major milestone and the school’s longer-term ambitions.
The 425th anniversary identity gives the school a strong visual platform for celebrating its history, while A School for Life has been given greater clarity and confidence for the years ahead.
Together, they give NULS a more flexible way to communicate different parts of its story across campaigns, events and wider school communications, while keeping everything connected to the established brand.
