Dundas Valley School of Art
Branding, Marketing, Advertising and More
Created in collaboration with:
Keir Overton: Director of Marketing, Events & Digital Strategy at DVSA – Client & Key Collaborator
DVSA’s Team & Department Heads – Clients & Collaborators
Muse has been working with the Dundas Valley School of Art for more than a decade, providing branding, marketing and strategic support on a variety of projects.
Most importantly to us, though, is the relationship we have been able to develop with DVSA, which is the key to the success and fulfillment we’ve found in each of these projects.
Collaborating with Authenticity
Muse has worked with DVSA on a number of different projects, big and small. Beginning with a full rebranding in 2015, where a new direction was established for the school; and continuing through years of outdoor advertising campaigns, fundraising strategy, event branding and more.
While each individual project has been uniquely challenging and fulfilling to solve with DVSA, the real reward comes from seeing how each engagement builds upon the next, and how an ongoing relationship allows us to explore some of our most unique, imaginative and creatively satisfying ideas. We have been committed to sharing more of our process with clients, immersing them deeply in the work of developing creative ideas and refining solutions to their problems. DVSA has always engaged deeply with that process, and the results speak for themselves.
We can’t take all the credit, though. Keir Overton and DVSA’s entire team have put a huge amount of trust in our process, which requires a strong belief in their values and serious bravery to embrace unique ideas. DVSA’s commitment to art, creativity and self-expression are more than just a slogan. They live and breath it in everything they do: from how they approach art education in general, down to how they work on their marketing with us.
This relationship embodies what we love about collaborating with clients: when they’re open to new ideas, value an outside perspective and engage authentically and fully with the process, we arrive at solutions that are uniquely their own and exciting for everyone involved.
Selected Work
Dundas Valley School of…
This outdoor ad campaign was completed for DVSA in 2023. It was the follow-up to a much more elaborate campaign that involved creating original digital illustrations, and this year DVSA wanted to embrace something visually and logistically simpler.
Like all strong solutions, it started with a question: how can we represent the deeper emotional experiences people have at DVSA, instead of only focusing on the output of artistic work? This led us to a solution that embraced a bold visual direction, simple imagery and powerful statements: DVSA isn’t just a school of “art,” it’s Dundas Valley School of… Courage, Happiness or Growth. Through these experiences it becomes easy to see how Art Changes Everything.
Branding DVSA’s Annual Art Auction
For over fifty years DVSA has run an annual art auction, showcasing the artwork of the community that gathers around the school; students, teachers and alumni alike.
Muse collaborated with DVSA on the development of a brand to represent the Art Auction. The goal was to visually represent the variety of artwork, the energy of the event and the creativity core to the school in an exciting visual way that worked visually with the existing DVSA brand while standing apart from it and avoiding confusion.
The result is a unique, dynamic brand with creativity at its core. In addition to the main branding developed for the initial project, we have since worked each year with DVSA to explore stylistic variations of the brand to help mark the annual return of the auction in novel ways.
The Creative Vision Fund
DVSA approached Muse for help with communication around their annual fundraising campaign. Like many not-for-profits, there was a challenge for DVSA to find a strong way of connecting the value the community felt towards DVSA to support for the school financially. While their annual fundraising campaign helped, DVSA wanted to increase awareness around the fact that the school is a not-for-profit, and that donations are a major way of helping DVSA operate as the cultural hub that it is in the community.
Together we developed the idea of making support for the school an ongoing initiative, not through a single annual drive but by creating an identity for DVSA supporters to join and identify with.
The Creative Vision Fund offers a visual and strategic method for DVSA to communicate the value ongoing support brings to the school and how that support translates directly to the culture and community the school helps to foster.
What we learned together
Our collaboration with DVSA has taught us the importance of shared values in a creative partnership, and how a long-term connection with a client is like an investment that yields stronger and stronger results over time.
Visit DVSA.ca to learn more about the school, and maybe register for a class while you’re there!
