XQ The Super School Project is an open call for students, designers, change makers, parents, and community leaders to rethink America’s high school system. Structurally, American high school hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years, and students today urgently need to be prepared to meet the demands of a modern, collaborative, and creative world. Initially spearheaded by Laureen Powell Jobs and the Emerson Collective, the project is a challenge for communities to design the high schools of the future - and pledged to fund each of the 10 most promising ideas with a $10M grant to build their school.
At Media Arts Lab (MAL for Good) I was involved in a year long collaboration with XQ on building their brand, evolving their website, creating their campaigns in different mediums, and spearheading a nation wide bus tour that connected with communities across the U.S.
The bus visited cities across the U.S., involving them in the challenge, and collecting local stories and perspectives on how to rethink high school. Our aim was to create the school bus of the future - complete with an iPad wall, voice recording booth, solar panels, and a fresh exterior illustration design by Craig & Karl.
It was a rewarding process to use our point of view as advertisers for positive change, and it was even more interesting to hear the stories of the many people across the US who are passionate about designing the future of high school education.
The XQ Super School Movement website was a continuous evolution with the progress of the movement. It housed a wide array of content in an easy to browse, and responsive framework. Using simple copy and images, the website worked to constantly tell the story of the people involved and the milestones being made.
The XQ messaging was very nuanced, and we iterated on literally thousands of icons for different actionable items on the website.
Our XQ Values print campaign aimed to convey the core XQ values through the lens of today’s high school students. Using provocative headlines, arresting portraits of students and bold colors, our ads remind the reader of what is really at stake within this issue.
Copywriter: Paul Bootlis
Photographer: Martin Schoeller
We designed a custom trophy to be awarded to the 10 super schools at the announcement ceremony.
The announcement of the Super Schools took place in Washington D.C., and included a lineup of speakers from Nancy Pelosi, to M.C. Hammer to Jill Biden, and Malala. Even President Obama streamed in a speech to the schools!