The School The Kids Built (TSTKB) is a long term fundraising initiative led by Living School to transform the historic Brown & Jolly building into a new Middle School for Years 5 to 8.
The project sits at the centre of Lismore’s renewal, offering a space where learning, creativity and community come together every day.
To bring it to life, the school needs significant, immediate funding. A new Middle School unlocks capacity for more students, expands senior pathways and accelerates Lismore’s vision of becoming a Learning City.
With students directly involved in the design of their future school, the initiative needed a brand that could inspire donors, communicate the vision and build trust across the wider community.
A distinct, compelling brand becomes essential as a visual trigger, a clear identity and a rallying point. It allows the community to see the vision, understand the need and recognise their role in helping build it. It helps people feel part of something larger. It builds trust, clarity and momentum, turning a complex multi year capital project into a movement led by the students themselves.
Our task was to create an identity that felt hopeful, imaginative and connected to the Living School ethos while standing strong as its own movement.
The brand for The School The Kids Built needed to do more than raise funds. It needed to capture imagination. It needed to feel playful yet purposeful. It needed to communicate that the impossible can become possible when young people are trusted to lead.
This is why we anchored the creative platform in the idea of thinking outside the box. The Middle School redevelopment is not a conventional building project. It is a generational shift in how a school can live within its community. It challenges old assumptions about what education looks like. The identity needed to reflect that sense of possibility.
At the centre of the visual language is the impossible square, a shape that tricks the eye and bends perspective. It reminds us that the most extraordinary ideas begin as questions and that innovation often starts with the words, “What if”. Placed at the heart of the shape is a door. An invitation. A signal that even bold, boundary-pushing ideas are grounded in access and belonging.
The brand mark draws inspiration from Living School’s visual language, making the connection clear while giving TSTKB its own fresh personality. We carried across selected colours to maintain familiarity, as well as the infinity symbol from the Living School brandmark. It serves as a subtle reminder that learning is continuous, expanding and never fixed.
The logo lockup layers a square form with the appearance of a book lying flat across the top. It nods to learning, creativity and construction all at once.
Collectively, the brand system champions possibility. It signals that this project is not about bricks and mortar alone. It is about opening doors, elevating student voice and building a Middle School shaped by imagination, courage and community.
The new identity gives Living School a clear, compelling fundraising brand with its own story and purpose.
TSTKB now has a visual language that can scale across campaigns, partnerships, donor materials and community engagement. It reframes the redevelopment as a shared mission rather than a construction project, helping donors understand the urgency and impact of their contribution.
By putting student voice at the centre, the brand builds emotional connection and positions the initiative as a once in a generation opportunity for Lismore. The result is a fundraising platform that inspires action, unlocks support and opens the door to a school built by kids but backed by the entire community.
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