Celebrating 120 years of The American School in Japan.
Project Years
September 2022–April 2023
Client
The American School in Japan
My Role
Graphic Designer
Responsibilities
Branding, Type Design
To celebrate its celebrating its 120th year, The American School in Japan needed branding for the celebration. In Japanese culture, kanreki, or the 60th birthday, is a significant milestone, so ASIJ wanted to celebrate its double kanreki by looking back at how far the school had come.
To increase recognition and appreciation of ASIJ’s storied history, and create flexible branding that could be applied to various mediums ranging from school pennants, to balloons, and even cakes.
The project resulted in increased recognition and appreciation of the history of the school, and increased involvement in the community.
As this was a logo throwing back 120 years to the creation of the school, we decided to take inspiration from the first document we had preserved, the school’s Prospectus from 1903 (pictured above).
From this document, we decided to recreate the typeface used for the school name (A School For Foreign Children).
The typeface was given the name Prospectus 1903, and had a full set of characters created. The typeface would be used in any media referencing ASIJ 120.
We wanted the logo to throw back to the school’s founding years, but also still reference the modern ASIJ. Inspiration was taken from the Meiji era, when the school was founded, and given a modern touch.
The final logo used a more vertical layout as a nod to the designs of the Meiji era, and also incorporated both English and Japanese into the design. This was then applied to many different mediums.
