Auckland City-based Animation College has turned its brand into an action hero with its first agency partnership. The 25 year-old organisation worked with Origami to overhaul its logo and introduce a new tagline, ‘the art of emotion’.
“The old brand has been refreshed a couple of times,” says the college’s general manager Graham Thomas. “It was quite cartoony and we were looking at removing the cartoony stigma around animation.”
Tutors at the college created four hero characters that became billboards and posters, dotted around central Auckland. Each is designed to convey a different emotion: surprise, anger, inquisitiveness and misery.
“When we did our branding work we stripped everything back to what was the essence of us,” says Thomas. “We’re a character animation school rather than just teaching you animation. We’re teaching our students how to put emotion into their animation through character performance.”
The college began working with Origami earlier in the year during a recruitment drive. Thomas says it will add to the four characters and is using the posters for calls to action around enrolment enquiries.
The rebrand was partly driven by competition in its market, he says. “A lot of our competitors have been rebranding and there is a need for us to also do that better. It’s also a good chance for us to be reminded of what our values are and what we’re trying to achieve as a company.”
