Brand & Graphic Designer
Pitch, Please!
Rebrand
Branding | Typography | Marketing
Pitch, Please! is a premier women-centered treble a cappella group at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. that challenges the standards of traditional a cappella and strives to empower women of all ages.
I joined the group in 2016 year as their vocal percussionist and music director. Together we performed on television shows including WGBH’s Sing That Thing and NBC’s Today Show. In 2019 we traveled to New York City to compete in the ICCA Finals, where I was awarded Outstanding Vocal Percussion.
Below is a rebrand of Pitch, Please! which I conceptualized in 2021 for the group as my senior project.
Project Overview
Problems
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Inconsistency in:
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Typography
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Colors
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Brand Elements
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Imagery
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Disconnect across social media platforms
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Unpredictable access to professional photography
Goals
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Create a cohesive brand that can evolve with the group as members come and go and the repertoire changes.
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Elevate the band to meet the level of professionalism the group bring to the stage.
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Entice new talent to audition and book new gigs.
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Deliver brand guidelines, social media templates, and design assets for future Social Media or Brand managers to create engaging, on-brand content with efficiency and quality.
Old branding
Old Instagram Feed
Old Logo
Old Website
Process
Workflow Research
I began by conducting user interviews and speaking with members of the group, so I better understood the needs of the users and the desires of the group members.
Key takeaways:
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Vocal arrangements are expensive these days, so booking gigs is critical. This solitary source of income means event producers are the most important audience to reach. Establishing relationships and driving conversion will enable them to afford new music, rent event spaces, record albums, etc.
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Around auditions, their inbox is inundated with questions from students; an FAQ page would be invaluable.
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The group would love to one day offer merchandise to bolster their income during competition season. Although the logistics are tricky for a student group, the demand is there, and they'd love to see a concept merchandise page, mainly for giggles but hopefully for the future too.
User Personas
Together with this data and competitor workflow research, I built and refined a wireframe for the Pitch, Please! website redesign. It wouldn't be an exceptionally complex website given the target audiences, but I considered both persona workflows to meet their needs and wishes. From here, I could begin to imagine how these pages would be organized and designed.
Website Wireframe
Brand Development
Pitch, Please! is an internationally competitive group, and I wanted to capture this drive in their logomark. I looked for a font with the right sporty slant and the proportions to support a musical staff. The way the staff mimicked racing stripes sold this idea to me.
Typographic studies
Early Drafts of Logo
Solution
Body - Obviously
Title - Obviously Bold Italic
Pattern palette
Pitch, Please! is not beholden to a single genre. The group’s versatility in sound and technique is a source of pride for its members, and in conversations about the meaning of a song or its emotional arc, the group uses color to agree on a mood.
Knowing this, I’ve chosen to let their brand colors vary just as much as their sound. Instead, I provided patterns they can overlay to create consistency over time. This will let the Pitch, Please! brand evolve; as the group changes, a new color can introduce the new era. In practice, this means one color could be their main color for a few weeks or for an entire semester.
Brand Book
