Case study · Logo & Brand Identity
CareerLabs
Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston Program Brand Identity & Environment
CareerLabs is a career readiness program for young adults inside Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston. The identity had to read as an official initiative of that organization on day one, not as a sub brand competing with the name that vouches for it.
01
An initiative, not a rival brand
A program identity inside a large nonprofit can fail in two directions. Too quiet and it never feels like a real opportunity to the young adults it is built for. Too loud and it starts pulling attention off the organization behind it, which is the source of its credibility in the first place. So the work here was calibration more than invention, and every decision had to answer to that.
The mark is a compass ring opened into a C with an eight point star set inside it. Direction and growth are what a career program actually offers a young adult, so the symbol says that plainly instead of reaching for something cleverer. Navy holds the ring and the first half of the name, which is the common ground with the parent. Green takes the star and the word Labs, giving the program one note of its own without leaving the family.
02
Present in the room they walk into
The wordmark stays bold and modern so it can carry an endorsement line underneath without the lockup turning fussy. That line does more work than it appears to. It is the thing that tells a parent, a partner or a student who stands behind the program, so the lockup is built with room for it at every size, with the parent symbol sitting below the name rather than competing beside it.
Messaging around the five pillars became a small repeatable icon set, so the program could speak consistently across print and screens without commissioning new artwork every time. At full scale on a lobby wall the mark holds its shape: cut as dimensional letters under raking light, the star still separates cleanly from the ring across the length of the floor. That is the argument for building on simple geometry rather than on detail.
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