College Adds Pizazz to Training Site to Attract Manufacturing Students

A college in Michigan hired a branding and graphics firm to create a space that would attract and inspire manufacturing students.

Lansing Community College boasts a state-of-the-art Center for Manufacturing Excellence (CME) and turned to a firm that specializes in the visual to influence how students would feel when they entered the space.

The CME features equipment similar to what students can expect to find in a real-life workplace. The branding objective was to create a space for “students to see and believe that working in manufacturing could be a cool career, with great pay, and that Lansing Community College would be a great place to start,” said the president of the branding firm.

For students entering the CME building, the design goals were 1) for them to recognize a place that is highly-specialized and designed specifically for them; and 2) for students to see and believe that manufacturing is a sophisticated and modern career choice.

To create that vibe, the space includes oversized, yellow safety striping typically found on plant floors, larger-than-life images of real people handling advanced technology, the use of metal as well as dark, warm gray colors that look like steel, and patterns to communicate order and precision.

The firm also created an art piece using 66 unique industrial icons to connect to the video-gaming culture.

Source: American Machinist