The brand we built for Belmont Christian College was tied together by their new purpose statement. When we got to the brand photography, we let that purpose drive it. BCC had done plenty of photoshoots over the years, but those images belonged to an earlier era of the brand, and if the new tagline was going to carry weight, the visuals had to say something the typical ‘school photography’ smiles and predictable classrooms couldn’t.
This was a crucial part of the visual storytelling – without reading anything, a member of the community can see and feel: ‘something is happening here’.
In my experience, schools default to polished images that make everything look clean and controlled. That’s a really safe approach. But, people tend to connect more deeply when they see movement and interaction and authenticity – the slightly imperfect moment a posed shot removes.
The purpose was about shaping, and that gave us the brief for the photography: help parents imagine their own child being shaped, picture where they could end up.
So we went film-style: grain, motion blur, a raw documentary feel, never quite ‘crisp’. Nostalgic and imaginative at the same time, which suited a school with deep roots and forward-looking ambition. The idea was to invite parents into the imaginative work, and leave them room to picture their own child.
We made a conscious decision to shoot ‘up’ at the students – giving them the larger than life ‘hero’ vibe – once again, reinforcing that while they might be a kid now, this is a place where they will become an adult, shaped by the purpose of the school.
We built the shoot around the key entry years and milestone moments, chose locations that let people move and interact naturally, and deliberately brought teachers into the frame. We even paired the professional shoot with disposable cameras we’d given the students to take their own photos.
BCC came away with a set of images that feel alive, timeless, and distinctly theirs: the visual identity for the brand launch, and a toolkit the website, collateral, and enrolment materials have built from since.
A film-style image suite that feels alive and distinctly BCC, far from the usual posed school photography.
The visual identity for the brand launch, and a toolkit for the website, collateral, and enrolment materials that followed.
Paired with the students' disposable-camera photos: one human, communal suite.
We rewrote CEN’s entire services canon and re-architected their website from the school’s point of view, without rebuilding it, turning eleven ungrouped services into five clear categories and the generic pages into role-based guides.
For the launch we did some participatory design: gave the kids disposable cameras to photograph the values in action, then built those photos back into the brand.
