Bayview Glen | Toronto, Canada
Toronto’s Bayview Glen offered a fresh, coeducational approach that graduated culturally insightful, genuinely empathetic, eagerly intelligent people, and inspired passionate loyalty in families and alumni. But in Toronto’s independent-school landscape, a longstanding preference for single-sex education drove Bayview Glen’s messaging to focus too centrally on the school’s coeducation.
Together, we realized that defending coeducation was keeping Bayview Glen in the single-sex schools’ shadow. Instead, the school needed to make the positive case for Bayview Glen, in its own inimitable terms, proclaiming the school’s inquiry-based, forward-looking program to all of Toronto.
Eileen Daunt, Head of School
Toronto’s Bayview Glen consistently graduated culturally insightful, genuinely empathetic, eagerly intelligent people, inspiring passionate loyalty in families and alumni. Having recently completed significant campus renovations, with more in the works, this relatively young school now stood ready to claim a position among Toronto’s top-tier educational institutions. Yet that status had so far proven elusive.
In Toronto’s independent-school landscape, a longstanding preference for single-sex education drove Bayview Glen’s messaging to focus too centrally—and too defensively—on the school’s coeducational approach.
At the same time, families’ and alumni’s love for the school had not yet translated into a philanthropic culture to help support current and future aspirations.
How could Bayview Glen shape a differentiating identity for a market that did not yet understand, or often even know about, the school? And how could that identity help build a philanthropic culture equal to and worthy of the community’s unfailing personal kindness?
Our CRANE team’s three charges—1) honing the school’s identity, 2) positioning the school in the market, and 3) strengthening the philanthropic culture—faced a similar challenge. But that challenge also pointed us toward the solution. The Bayview Glen community held an especially strong aversion to anything remotely hinting at showiness, superficiality, pomposity, elitism, or falseness. It was therefore imperative to convey the community’s intelligence, kindness, and creativity in a way that reflected genuine modesty, yet still resonated in a highly competitive market.
For the linchpin of Bayview Glen’s updated identity system, we chose a colon [:] to represent the many and varied ways that Bayview Glen reinvigorates educational practices. In a sentence, a colon signals a further definition or refinement to come, an elaboration, an explanation, or a list. In math and logic, a colon signifies a ratio—a balance or a proportion. In all cases, a colon induces readers to pause and consider what the terms on either side really mean and how they relate to each other.
In Bayview Glen’s program, the colon acts as a connector and reflector, separating two commonly conjoined words or parts of words. For example:
co : education / human : kind / meta : cognitive /
cosmo : politan / team : play / art : work
The words on either side of the colon play off each other to reveal hidden meanings and re-energize the original term—just as Bayview Glen reveals and creates energizing, unexpected relationships among people, places, processes, and ideas.
The program’s jewel-toned color palette adds warmth, and linear “energy wave” bands project an active school that’s always in motion.
“The level of professionalism and profound sense of caring defined our remarkable working relationship. The CRANE team’s intuitive support and dedication to excellence was unwavering as we pulled back the curtain to look at ourselves. We emerged with a vibrant brand that truly reflects who we are.”
–Karen Horsman, Director of Communications
