Leslie Huang

REDESIGNING DESIGN: Marketing expert Gerald Gerard explains to IB Business students how to successfully moderate a focus group for their CCS rebranding design. The students identified a multitude of stakeholders in the project and determined that focus groups would be the best way to include their opinions in the final design.

Throughout this school year, IB Business 3-4 students will undertake a new assignment in addition to their normal class work. They will help with developing a new logo as well as a tagline for Carmel Clay Schools.

Courtney Taylor, community relations liaison for Carmel Clay Schools, said via email that while the logo and tagline will be updated, the seal used for official documents will still remain the same.

Students will run the project mostly by themselves with IB Business teacher Joshua Shelton, Taylor and Superintendent Mike Beresford taking mostly guidance roles rather than controlling ones.

Shelton said, “My role is to facilitate…to allow students the autonomy they need to come up with solutions on their own but to also give them guardrails so we stay focused.”

This project will take multiple stages throughout the school year in order to produce a satisfactory final product.

Reagan Markland, IB Business student, vice president of DECA and senior, said that the focus right now is planning and gathering all the necessary information.

Markland said, “We have this huge document that outlines our timeline…We’ve worked a lot with brainstorming questions for interviews and focus groups.”

Shelton said, “Those aspects of us gathering and researching the information will be done with students, teachers, administrators, parents and other key stakeholders.”

Teachers fit the Carmel rebranding project into the curriculum of the IB Business classes as one of the core projects that students had to accomplish as a part of the curriculum. Both Beresford and Shelton said there were many academic benefits to the project that made it beneficial for the IB students.

Beresford said via email, “(Students) will learn what professionals do in their careers while in high school.”

Shelton said, “Kids are getting to take what they learned in the classroom in relation to marketing and branding and apply that to a real-world scenario…it also gets students to focus on the process, not just the product.”

All parties involved with this project said the impacts of the redesigning are profound and far-reaching. Beresford said the new logo would be a more modern way of communicating the values of the school district with the public.

Markland said, “Companies are going to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for this kind of work. As a student to have the opportunity to sit down and do it yourself and to see the long-lasting impact… to maybe come back one day with your kids and be able to say I helped create that, is really amazing.”