Brand design for Inspiration Trust

Unifying a leading educational trust through brand strategy

Challenge: The Inspiration Trust, a nationally recognised educational charity, faced a significant challenge: despite its achievements in raising attainment and aspirations, it was widely misunderstood by its families and the local community. This, coupled with negative media perception, necessitated a fundamental change in its public image.

Solution: To address this, we embarked on extensive strategic work to understand the true perceptions of the Inspiration Trust and the aspirations for its future. Through a collaborative approach involving focus groups, surveys, and workshops with multiple stakeholders, we gathered valuable insights. This comprehensive research directly informed the brief for an engaging and unifying brand identity.

The new style extended to the Trust’s individual schools, where our approach balanced unity with individuality. We achieved this by retaining each school’s historic iconography while introducing a new typographic lock-up based on the overarching Trust identity.

Outcome: The result is a cohesive and proud “Inspiration Trust family” of brands. The new visual identity fosters a stronger sense of unity across the Trust while allowing individual schools to maintain their unique heritage. This strategic rebranding has helped to clarify the Trust’s mission, improve its engagement with families and the community, and ultimately build a brand that stakeholders can be proud of.