Imagine this. It's 2017. In about a year, you're opening the first new Catholic high school in the Diocese of Phoenix in more than 15 years and the first to serve fast-growing areas of the West and Southwest Valley.
You are trying to sell yourself to a lot of stakeholders—especially prospective donors, parents, and students. But the school building is in the early stages of construction. There are few tangible signs that something is actually rising from a dusty patch of land.
Sister Mary Jordan Hoover, OP, the founding principal of Avondale, Arizona's new St. John Paul II Catholic High School,recognized that the need for identity was acute. So, in March 2017, she drove halfway across Phoenix to meet with me.
As a product of a Catholic high school myself, I intimately understood the brand challenges associated with one. Catholic high schools are like small colleges that must compete aggressively for prospective students—and their parents—against charter schools. Sister Mary Jordan recognized that the coalescing community surrounding the school needed an identity to rally around.
Sister Mary Jordan already had ideas of what needed to go in the coat of arms. School colors had already been selected. It was mostly about fitting the right elements together and making a whole startup brand sing.
Key choices were made to reflect the school's identity, location, and mission:
• A traditional tripartite Dominican form and a torch, also a common symbol of the Dominican Order, set the tone. The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia (also known as the "Nashville Dominicans") had been invited to Phoenix to run this school in collaboration with the Diocese of Phoenix, so this was important.
• The "dagger"-style cross is a callback to one used in the diocesan coat of arms. I was familiar with this because my own high school had it. It has been used by the Diocese of Phoenix since it was erected in 1969 and before that by the Diocese of Tucson. It is below an elongated M from the coat of arms of Pope St. John Paul II.
• The mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe inspired the stars on the left segment. There are seven, representing the number of Catholic high schools in the diocese (and they are on the left side to symbolize JPII's role in serving the West Valley in particular).
• When I was in high school, it irked me that the shape of the coat of arms at my school didn't circumscribe neatly, as it was almost always used in a roundel carrying the name of the school. This was fixed by using a "miner's spade" form.
The rest of the identity was driven by the type of immediate needs I knew would be had. A roundel with the coat of arms is the primary logo, but it is comparatively unadorned—no ribbon, no year of establishment. This is to permit use at smaller sizes.
Despite the fact that the logo is designed to work well when it is small, it has been put in some large uses. It was unveiled to the public in May 2017, when future students put together a custom carved and painted puzzle of the logo at a reveal party.
The logo was everywhere when the school opened (and still is today): embroidered on uniforms, on signage, and in a 10-foot-wide terrazzo inlay in one of the hallways. It was paired with a separately designed identity for the school's athletics programs.
