CSU Climate Hub at Spur
Strategy
Design
Colorado State University engaged Cultivate Communications to develop the brand identity and communication strategy for the CSU Climate Hub at Spur, supporting its public launch and long-term visibility. The work positioned the Hub as a trusted entry point for climate engagement, aligned with CSU brand standards and digital best practice.
We led a brand development process grounded in stakeholder and competitor insights, then translated this into a practical identity system. This included brand positioning, tone of voice and key brand characteristics, alongside visual direction, logo development, typography, colour palette and supporting motifs.
In parallel, we produced a comprehensive communication strategy to guide how the Climate Hub shows up across channels, including clear goals and objectives, audience identification, messaging and mapping, recommended channels and tools, an implementation plan for launch, and a monitoring and evaluation approach.
The identity and strategy provide a foundation for coherent communications, consistent design and confident rollout across priority moments, including the website and launch campaign.
We led CSU Climate Hub at Spur through a structured, research-based brand development process designed to build clarity, alignment and momentum before any design decisions were locked in. We began by working with the team to define the purpose of the Hub, the audiences it needed to reach and how the brand should feel and behave. This included competitor and peer scanning, brand personality exploration and early thinking on tone of voice and key messages, so the identity could be distinctive while still fitting within CSU’s broader ecosystem.
This process was deliberately collaborative. It engaged senior leaders, stakeholders and partners early, helping ensure the identity reflected the Hub’s role and ambition and that there was shared language to guide decisions during development and launch.
From this foundation, we moved into concept development and logo studies. We prepared and presented three distinct logo directions, each linked back to the agreed positioning and personality, then facilitated feedback to understand what resonated and why. From there, we refined the preferred direction through iterative development, progressing from concept to a final mark and supporting visual system, including colour palette, typography and core brand elements.
Alongside the brand identity, we developed a communication strategy to support the CSU Climate Hub’s public launch and establish it as a trusted gateway to CSU’s climate expertise. The strategy set clear communication goals, defined priority audiences and built a messaging system to support consistent use across channels, including a core narrative, key messages, talking points and audience-specific message mapping aligned with the Hub’s 2025 to 2030 direction.
We then translated that foundation into a practical channel plan that made the strategy easy to implement. This covered controlled channels such as the Hub website and core collateral, interactive engagement through LinkedIn, partner amplification, events and media activity coordinated with CSU communications. The strategy also included a launch implementation plan and an outline for monitoring and evaluation across web, social, newsletters and media, so the Hub could track what is working and refine over time.
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