HKU School of Computing & Data Science — EDUCATION
Empowering Changemakers
Background
With over a century of history, The University of Hong Kong is the region’s longest established higher education institute.
HKU approached us to create the brand identity for a new school, combining the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science.
Strategy
Through our brand strategy workshops, we worked closely with the department’s professors and stakeholders to uncover core values and craft a unique personality and positioning for the school, unified around the purpose of ‘Empowering Changemakers’.
Expression
We honed in on the core values, and built the brand through our iterative process, presenting concepts then refining and refining to a critical logomark, and visual identity system.
The logo highlights the coming together of the two departments, the ‘C’ of ‘Computing’ and ‘D’ of ‘Data Science’. The overall ‘S’ form signifies the ‘School’.
We took inspiration from the earliest computers, and the essence of the earliest codification.
A lens to connect the past and future
To complement the new logomark, we developed the CDS iris, a graphical system used to distinguish the five core fields of study and throughout the brand communications.
The iris is a central form of the new identity. We were initially inspired by the form of a ‘technological eye’, an iris or lens that connects the past and the future. The iris is constructed from the Morse code translation of the five core fields of study under CDS.
We chose Work Sans typeface family as the wordmark for the CDS brand identity. Work Sans is a grotesque style, with a functional, no-nonsense, factual aesthetic.
The colour palette was built from the five core fields of study, enabling flexibility in the visual identity, and allowing for variation and depth in the brands’ presentation.
Thank you
Thank you to Jessica, Coni, Naussica, Frankie, Erica, Eunice, and everyone on the HKU CDS team. Thank you to the professors for through the brand strategy process.
Thank you to Jordan Scott for bringing the logo to life with motion.