The Carmelite Institute of Britain and Ireland
The Carmelite Institute of Britain and Ireland (CIBI) was established in 2005 as a collaborative initiative of the British and Irish Provinces of Carmelites and the Anglo-Irish Province of Discalced Carmelites. They offer online courses in Carmelite spirituality and theology, with a selection of courses up to master’s level accredited by the internationally recognised St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth.
Challenge
The existing brand and website for the Carmelite Institute of Britain and Ireland (CIBI) was based on the brand of the Carmelite Order which primarily uses the colours brown and yellow. As a result, the CIBI brand and website looked dated and uninviting. The CIBI were looking for a fresh and modern looking brand and website that would appeal to potential students and encourage them to sign-up for one of their courses. However, while they were looking for a fresh and modern brand, they still wanted to keep a link with the traditions of the brand of the Carmelite Order.
For the website, the content on the existing website was long, cumbersome and uninviting to read. The CIBI wanted us to help them organise the content so that a visitor would not be presented with endless amounts of text, but instead would be presented with short sections of information with more detailed information available on request. They also wanted us to vastly improve the editing experience for CIBI staff, making it easier for them to create dynamic pages content themselves, without requiring any web coding knowledge.
Client Sector
Solution
Our first step was to sit down with the CIBI to discuss what they needed from their new brand. We also researched the history of the Carmelite Brand (which dates back to 1499). Even though the brand has evolved over that last 500+ years, there are a number of key elements that have always been included - the 3 Stars (for which there are a number of explanations, depending on the time in history), the Mountain (representing Mount Carmel) and the Shield (representing the defence of Church and Faith). Taking on board the needs of the new brand and the history of the Carmelite brand, we set about designing a new brand for CIBI. We designed a modern version of the shield and included the mountains and stars. We also included the Carmelite brown colour as a secondary colour to enhance the links with the Carmelite Order.
Once we had the brand designed and approved, we started the design process for a new website. We worked with the CIBI to develop a bright clean and easy-to-read website. We used bright photography and significantly reduced the amount of text initially displayed on each page. Additional detailed information (e.g. summary of each module in each course) was hidden in a clickable accordion that the user can click open if required. We also added an online application form to allow potential students to apply online. Finally, we migrated all the existing blog content from their old website and created an easy-to-use content editor for the staff in the CIBI to allow them easily add new blog content in the future.
View the website at www.cibi.ie
We approached Designit to support our rebrand and website project and they worked very closely with us to understand our needs. We found their approach to be thorough and creative and the result was a modern, relevant suite of tools including logo mark, brand colours and fonts, all brought together in a simple, functional and modern website that reflected our organisations values. At all times they were great to work with and easy to deal with, and we were delighted with the service, support and training. The website looks great and is easy to update, and they were always on hand to answer any questions we had. To top it all off the project was completed on budget!
Siobhan Walsh,
General Manager,
The Carmelite Institute of Britain and Ireland
Developing the Solution
We initially researched the Carmelite Order brand to understand the importance of each element. We then used those elements as inspiration to develop and design a new brand for the CIBI.
