For a trusted brand, sometimes growth ≠ expansion. For TCASE it meant reinforcing their commitment to their existing members by refining their messaging and identity.
The Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education (TCASE) has served to inspire and empower special education professionals in Texas since 1960. After restructuring, TCASE approached our team with a goal of strengthening messaging, visual identity, and member communications, and of positioning the organization for growth.
A major research question we were asked to investigate was whether or not the association could grow beyond administrators by actively recruiting special education teachers as members. We conducted a comprehensive brand audit with several focus groups along with in-depth interviews, a member email survey, and a review of all existing brand materials. Findings revealed a very positive view of the organization, but no desire to invite teachers to be part of an association for school administrators. Our task then became to refine TCASE’s strong brand and reinforce its commitment to administrators.
We found the organization’s acronym had far more equity and recognition than its full name, so we made the recommendation to formally adopt ‘TCASE’ as the official name. We also designed a new logo—inspired by the shape of a butterfly—to represent the transformation educators and students with special needs go through together. The result was a modern, positive, and vibrant logo, tagline, and brand guidelines.
