No matter how much Design and our industry changes, at Hexanine, we never feel far from our roots. It’s not hard to remember where we started — as young, hungry students. We like to stoke our creative fires and also remember those foundational days by working with the next generation of talent out there. Teaching is one avenue for that.

From time to time, we like to showcase the work of our students like those below. It’s the impressive output of Tim’s students from Chicago Portfolio School, as part of their strategic identity redesigns in Brand Standards class.

In no particular order:

Jennie Li has redesigned the HBO mark to better reflect the cable channel’s great film and event programming.

Liz Cook has taken Pandora where no Internet radio brand has gone before, by focusing on its musical roots.

Jordan Johnson tackled a Nikon redesign by bringing the brand back to a technical place, with a lightwave and shutter style approach.

Carrie Richardson simplified and updated the Netflix logo by modernizing the typography and carrying across the important element of “pressing play.”

Lindsay Lewis sought to parallel JC Penney’s new brand direction, but instead came up with a clever, cute, and sophisticated hand-drawn type treatment that targets the young, hip, female demographics the company covets.

At Hexanine, we are passionate about design and communicating. So, mixing the two makes a lot of sense. We’ll be speaking at this year’s HOW Design Live and are continuing an ongoing discussion about issues around the work we do as designers. We talk at more length about this and other sundry in an interview “workshop” that has just been posted at HOW Design TV. Check the link for a short excerpt, and make sure you join us this summer in Boston!

This redesign of the Gore-Tex identity is the work of Becky Sanders, who just completed Tim’s Brand Standards Manuals class at Chicago Portfolio School. Becky’s redesign of the lackluster logo for Gore-Tex takes the brand to a new level, with her emphasis on the crucial strategic pillars of outdoor technology and innovation. It’s a strong, smart, and engaging redesign, with a nice accompanying standards manual. Good stuff, Becky.

This time, we’re featuring the work of Matt Whiting, with his redesign of the Criterion identity. Matt attends Chicago Portfolio School, and one of Tim’s students in Brand Standards Manuals. His clever, conceptually-sharp Criterion logo and brand book demand a second look. Nice job, Matt.

Occasionally we use this space to showcase some of our students’ great work.

This time, we are highlighting Brigid Eduarte, former Hexanine intern and student in one of Tim’s Brand Standards Manuals classes at Chicago Portfolio School. Brigid’s project consisted of redesigning the Mead identity and collateral, and creating a clever, whimsical brand book. All of her work captured the creative, imaginative spirit she envisioned for this brand redesign.

Great work, Brigid.

We gain at least as much inspiration and encouragement from the work of our students as they receive from our instruction, so we’d like to pass it along by showcasing some of their impressive student projects. Periodically, we’ll highlight great work coming out of our classrooms on this blog.

Last quarter in Tim’s Brand Standards Manuals class at Chicago Portfolio School, Allison Chod chose to redesign the identity for the Tic Tac brand. In addition to building an identity system around her new mark, she also created packaging concepts and a brand book to guide usage of the new rollout.

Allison’s work was selected as one of four winners in the Best Of Quarter competition. Congratulations, Allison.