Glendale Community College · Brand & Marketing System
A two-person branding project: faculty + ASU alumna intern
Project Overview
GCC Cares is consolidating its student support services into a single destination in the former bookstore building, a centralized hub that brings together food access, social services, community resources, and wellness support under one roof. This is a phased project beginning in Fall 2026. The food pantry and bodega area are targeted for October; full buildout will follow in subsequent phases as funding and renovation are completed.
Timeline note: Building renovations are phased. Food pantry and bodega area target: October 2026. Full buildout is ongoing. The grocery area is contingent on a $40,000 electrical upgrade that is currently unfunded. Design can proceed in parallel, but physical environmental graphics for that zone should be held until funding is confirmed.
What this brief is for. This document scopes the branding and marketing system for the GCC Cares Hub. The full hub buildout, programs, partnerships, physical renovation, funding, is being shaped by a campus committee that Michelle Blomberg serves on. The work showcased here is narrower and more specific: a complete brand identity, marketing collateral, signage, and mural concepts, built by a two-person team. Michelle (DMA faculty) leads the project. A recent DMA alumna, now at ASU, executes the design work through an approved 300-hour AmeriCorps internship that earns a $1,500 education award toward her tuition, with the option of a second contract (see the funding-status note below). AI is part of the production workflow for research, briefs, and asset development. This is experiential learning embedded inside a real campus initiative.
✓ Funding status (approved, June 2026). The AmeriCorps internship for this project is approved. Each contract is a 300-hour term that earns the intern a $1,500 education award toward tuition or loans, and a second contract is available; terms run from early August through the end of July. AmeriCorps has also invited GCC to cost-share toward hourly pay on top of the education award, and is checking whether the national office will approve added hourly salaries; a hub grant we are writing would fund that piece. The education-award placement is confirmed now; the additional paid-salary layer is promising but not yet final.
Organization Goals
A grocery and bodega area stocked through a St. Mary’s Food Bank partnership, with refrigerators and fresh and non-perishable food available like a neighborhood market. The hub actively accepts community donations of spices and seasonings so students can actually make meals from what they take home, not just collect ingredients they can’t use.
GCC’s social worker and AmeriCorps-funded social work interns will have dedicated office space within the building, with an intentionally open, integrated layout that encourages informal interaction alongside formal one-on-one appointments. The sitting area adjacent to the offices is a quiet waiting space designed for students meeting with staff, not a general hangout area.
A shared community resource space will host partner organizations offering ACCESS and SNAP enrollment, counseling referrals, and other social services. A Dress for Success clothing closet provides free professional and workforce attire for students preparing for interviews and careers. A conference room is available for Career Services presentations, workshops from outside agencies, and meetings with community partners.
A dedicated kids play area where children can play while their parent receives services, meets with a social worker, or accesses resources. The Kids Corner should be painted with kid-friendly elements drawn from the hub’s brand identity. This is essential for student parents who would otherwise skip services because they have no childcare.
Located near the coffee area and food pantry, this is the social heart of the hub. A lounge and cafe area with free coffee, microwaves, and comfortable seating where students can eat, relax, study, and connect. A monitor in the hangout space shows a rotation of cooking demonstration videos (filmed in the nutrition area kitchens) and a daily schedule of what’s happening at the hub: Career Services workshops, community partner visits, cooking demos, and other activities students might want to join. This is where the energy is. The quiet waiting area near the offices is separate and intentionally calm.
Live cooking demos happen in the nutrition area where there are kitchens for hands-on instruction. Budget meal planning, recipes using pantry staples and donated spices, and basic cooking skills for students who may have never cooked for themselves. Demos are recorded and played on the hangout space monitor so students who missed them can still learn.
GCC Cares hosts a free outdoor farmers market once a month. Fresh produce, community vendors, and a gathering event that brings students out of classrooms and into the space in a low-pressure social context. Some markets now include free haircuts, a high-value, high-visibility service that generates real foot traffic and word of mouth. The brand system needs to extend outdoors: signage, banners, social media promotion, and event graphics for the market are part of the scope.
The central design challenge: The space must feel genuinely inviting and community-oriented, not clinical or charity-coded. The goal is for students to want to come here, not feel like they have to.
Audience
GCC is a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). The HSI designation requires at least 25% Hispanic undergraduate enrollment and qualifies the institution for federal Title V funding. GCC has an active Office of Hispanic-Serving Initiatives and has received Adelante GCC Title V grants to support Latino/a student success. This designation matters for the hub because it shapes the cultural context of everything from signage language to food offerings to the bilingual needs of the space.
GCC serves approximately 44% of students who identify as food insecure. The student population includes unhoused students, students with unmet mental health needs, single parents, veterans, students with disabilities, and students navigating housing, transportation, childcare, and financial instability. The average student age is 25. Over half are first-generation college students.
Design decisions, from color choices to signage language to layout, should reflect and respect this community’s dignity, resilience, and diversity.
Design Voice
Friendly, warm, energetic, and community-centered. The visual language should feel hand-crafted and human rather than institutional. Think Trader Joe’s: bright colors, hand-drawn or illustrated elements, chalkboard-style signage, a neighborhood market aesthetic that makes people feel like regulars rather than recipients.
The brand identity should be built around a library of wellness illustrations: images that promote healthy food, physical and mental wellness, and calm, inspiring moments. The color palette should feel calming and grounded while still being warm and inviting. These illustrations become the visual system that ties every zone together and can be used across signage, murals, digital, and print.
Language should be welcoming and first-person (“Come on in,” “Help yourself,” “We’re here”) rather than procedural or bureaucratic. The social workers are neighbors, not case managers. Everyone is welcome. There is no shame here.
Design Scope
A complete brand system documented in an online brand guide, covering:
Brochures, flyers, menus, event posters, informational handouts.
Website, social media, GauchoTV graphics, video lower thirds, animations.
Zone identification: Bodega, Coffee + Hangout, Community Connection, Kids Corner, Conference Room, Laundry, Dress for Success, GCC Cares.
Wall murals and large-format imagery around themes of food, community, wellness, and belonging. Murals will be conceptualized as part of the brand development process and executed by GCC student artists. See Mural section below for team and context.
Banners, signage, and promotional materials for the monthly outdoor farmers market. The brand needs to work outside as well as inside, in sunlight, at a distance, on a table banner or a pop-up tent. Social media event graphics for market promotion are part of this scope.
Murals
Murals are a central element of the GCC Cares Hub environmental design, not an afterthought. They carry the brand into the physical space in a way that printed vinyl and signage cannot: they are permanent, human-made, and belong to the community that created them.
This project builds on real institutional expertise. GCC has completed large-scale mural installations on campus, including a 95-foot mural at the pool and the Art Building mural designed and painted by Art Club members, demonstrating the collaborative student-artist model that will carry forward here. Both projects are precedent for what a student team can accomplish at scale.
Mural execution will be led by either the Art Club (who have painted large-scale murals on campus) or GCC Design Studio students, depending on availability, timeline, and the nature of the specific zones. The two groups can also collaborate, design students develop the concepts and brand system, Art Club handles the physical painting.
These are related but distinct categories within the design scope:
Environmental graphics is the broader category, it includes everything from zone signage to wayfinding arrows to large-format printed vinyl. It can be produced and installed relatively quickly and changed over time.
Murals are a subset of environmental graphics that are hand-painted directly on walls. They are permanent, high-impact, and community-built. For GCC Cares Hub, murals are planned for high-visibility zones, most likely the Bodega wall (oversized fruit imagery) and the main entry or lounge area (welcoming, community-themed imagery).
The brand system developed in Phases 1-4 will directly inform mural design. Students should not begin painting until the overall visual language, palette, illustration style, typography, has been established and approved.
Brand Identity
Rather than a single logo or mascot, the GCC Cares Hub brand should be built around a library of wellness illustrations that work across every touchpoint. These illustrations become the visual language of the space: warm, calming, diverse, and human. They show up on wall murals, signage, social media, printed materials, and digital screens.
Healthy food and cooking, community connection, studying and learning, self-care and wellness, families and children, nature and calm. The illustrations should reflect the diversity of GCC’s student population and feel aspirational without being preachy. The Kids Corner gets its own kid-friendly subset of the illustration library, painted directly on the walls.
Zone navigation on wall maps. Welcome messaging on digital displays at entry. Social media content (“New meal planning workshop Thursday”). Printed materials like flyers and event posters. The library approach means the brand stays fresh because new illustrations can be added over time without redesigning the whole system.
Illustrations must work at small scale (social media avatar) and at large scale (wall mural). Consistent style, limited color palette from the brand system, clear and simple forms. The style guide should include templates so student designers can create new illustrations that match the established look.
Design Phases
Research References
The list below is the starting point for inspiration research. Studios, retail precedents, and peer institutions worth visiting, reading about, and pulling reference imagery from. The visual mood board itself will be built by the student designer as the first deliverable in Phase 1, drawing from these sources and her own research.
The single most useful brand voice reference for this project. Trader Joe’s uses light-colored wood shelving, hand-written product labels, and tropical artwork spanning the walls, everything built around a sunny, community-first aesthetic. Chalkboard-style signage, locally flavored art, hand-drawn price cards, and warm lighting create a market-like atmosphere where value cues feel friendly rather than transactional. That’s the energy GCC Cares needs: “friendly rather than hard sell.”
What to borrow: the human imperfection of hand-lettered signage, the warm material palette, the sense that real people work here and know your name. What to translate: the humor and personality without the nautical theme. Bright colors, illustrated elements, a voice that says “we’re glad you’re here.”
Read: How Trader Joe’s branding made the chain beloved →The most directly relevant reference for the physical space design. Thread Collaborative is a Phoenix-based design studio that built a new store prototype for Sprouts. Their approach: vibrant color, playful typography, simple illustrations, and sincere messaging that expresses the energy of a farmers market. The produce wall, illustrated fruit tumbling out of crates at varying depths, with dimensional lettering, is exactly the precedent for the Bodega mural zone.
Specific techniques worth referencing: wall vinyl with dimensional lettering overlay (vestibule), department signage printed directly onto beadboard and OSB for texture, hand-stenciling in secondary zones. All of these are produceable by a student team with the right materials and guidance.
Thread Collaborative: Sprouts case study → CIP Retail: Behind the scenes →SNASK is a Stockholm creative agency that builds bold, emotionally driven brand identities. Their ICA grocery store rebrand is the closest analog to the GCC Cares Hub brief: a full interior transformation approached through storytelling and tactility, with signage, tone of voice, and environmental design developed together. Materials feel warm and lived-in rather than corporate. Typography has presence. The result feels rooted in the community it serves.
Their food and beverage work, LikeMeat campaign, Oddlygood packaging, various food industry identities, shows a consistent visual language: big color, expressive letterforms, character-forward illustration, humor that never condescends. SNASK describes their philosophy as “design built on love, courage and real emotion.” That’s the brief.
snask.com → Behance portfolio →The real Dutch reference. Studio Dumbar is Rotterdam’s preeminent brand identity studio, known for large-scale identity systems that translate from digital to physical space. They designed the official brand identity for the Netherlands, replacing an impressionistic painted logo with a forward-thinking system built on orange, the tulip, and the NL acronym. Their environmental and wayfinding work shows what a professional brand guide looks like when it has to perform across every surface and scale.
For student designers: look at Studio Dumbar’s work not to copy the style (which is more corporate/institutional than GCC Cares needs) but to understand how a brand system is documented and applied consistently. Their case studies are a masterclass in brand guide structure.
NL brand case study → studiodumbar.com →Large-scale illustrated produce on walls is a proven environmental design move in food-adjacent spaces, it communicates abundance, joy, and nourishment before a single word of copy does. The Sprouts produce wall (Ref 02) is the premium commercial version. The GCC Cares version should be designed by the student team, match the established brand palette, and be painted by Art Club and/or Design Studio students directly on the wall.
For the student designer: Search “market mural illustration,” “grocery store wall mural,” and “Mercado mural” on Pinterest and Google Images for scale and style references. The Frida’s Market murals in Los Angeles and the Mission District murals in San Francisco are excellent examples of large-scale illustrated food imagery in community contexts.
The national gold standard for this model. Amarillo College built a “culture of caring” around their ARC, a centralized resource hub with food pantry, clothing closet, social workers, and community partners under one roof. Students who access the ARC have 36% higher retention and 14% higher persistence rates than those who don’t. The GCC Cares Hub is building the same model. Worth reading the Lumina Foundation case study for the leadership and operational context, not just the physical design.
Amarillo College ARC → Lumina Foundation case study →Structurally the closest parallel to GCC Cares. Their center provides food, clothing, and basic resources in a confidential, stigma-free environment, with a wide variety of non-perishable staples, fresh produce, and frozen meals. Their clothing closet, called “Threads”, operates as a boutique-style experience, directly modeling what GCC’s Dress for Success zone should feel like. Bergen’s branding uses the name “Bergen Cares,” a short, ownable phrase with warmth built in. Worth studying for naming inspiration.
Bergen Cares Center →Not a design reference but essential context for anyone working on this project. RAND’s research on basic needs support in community colleges identifies centralized hubs with streamlined intake and minimal eligibility barriers as the strongest-performing model. Understanding the evidence behind why these spaces are designed the way they are makes the design work more intentional. Useful reading for the social worker meeting and for student designers who want to understand the brief deeply.
RAND: Six Core Features of Basic Needs Support →Future Exploration
This section is not a deliverable. The brand system, murals, and environmental graphics are the work. What follows is a horizon scan, ideas worth having in the room when conversations about the space mature, and a record of how AI was actually used in this project.
How AI contributed to this brief: This document was researched and written with AI assistance, synthesizing precedent spaces, developing the brand framework, drafting the design voice, and structuring the phased approach. That’s a legitimate and meaningful use of the technology: not as a gimmick layered onto the physical space, but as a tool that accelerated professional-quality thinking. For a community project with no budget and a tight timeline, that matters.
A stigma-aware AI assistant, accessible via a kiosk, a QR code on the wall, or a web app, that helps students figure out what they qualify for and where to go. Rather than asking “are you food insecure?” it uses presumptive framing: “Here are things many GCC students use. Which of these sounds helpful?” No forms, no intake interviews, no judgment. The student gets a short list of relevant resources and a clear next step.
CopaMigo is already in development as a student-built, stigma-aware triage and routing tool. The GCC Cares Hub is a natural physical home for it, either as a kiosk near the entrance or as a QR-linked web app on the wall. The new interactive screen in the library could also serve as a CopaMigo access point, connecting the library and the hub as part of the same support ecosystem.
An AI-powered recipe tool where students tell it what food they have in their pantry and it suggests meals they can actually make with those ingredients. Simple instructions, budget-friendly, nutrition-conscious. Could run on a kiosk next to the food area, on the library interactive screen, or as a take-home QR code. The hub should also actively collect spice donations from the community so students have the seasonings to actually make the recipes, not just the base ingredients. This is a real product with real users and a constrained, meaningful problem, which makes it ideal as a student-built project.
SNAP, ACCESS, FAFSA, emergency aid, the application processes for these are notoriously confusing. An AI assistant that walks students step by step through eligibility and application, in plain language, without jargon. Could supplement the in-person community org presence in the resource zone for students who prefer to start on their own before talking to someone.
The social work team will need to produce regular content, event announcements, pantry inventory updates, resource spotlights, without a dedicated marketing person. AI-assisted templates in Canva, combined with a simple prompt system, let non-designers generate on-brand content quickly. Build this into Phase 7 alongside the Canva template handoff.
Ethical design note: Any AI tool in this space must be designed with the same stigma-reduction principles as the physical space. No data collection that feels surveillance-like. No requiring login or student ID for basic resource information. Opt-in, anonymous where possible, and always with a clear path to a real human if preferred.
The new interactive screen in the GCC library is an opportunity to extend the hub’s presence beyond the physical building. It could serve as a CopaMigo access point, display the pantry inventory board, or rotate wellness content and resource information. This connects the library and the hub as part of the same student support ecosystem, reaching students who may not know the hub exists yet.
A screen near the Bodega entrance that shows what’s available this week, updated by staff via a simple Google Sheet or form. Removes the “I don’t know what they have, so I won’t bother going in” barrier. Students can check it before deciding whether to visit. Build it as a Google Sheets-connected display using a Raspberry Pi or a cheap Android tablet.
Every zone gets a simple printed card with a QR code linking to more information, SNAP enrollment steps, clothing donation guidelines, upcoming cooking class schedule. Low tech, high value. A student with basic web skills can build and maintain the linked pages. Keeps the physical signage clean while making depth of information available to anyone who wants it.
Screens inside the hub connect to GauchoTV content: rotating event announcements, resource spotlights, student stories, cooking demo highlights, and daily activity schedules. The brand system developed in this project should include a GauchoTV template so the hub has a consistent visual presence.
Promotional animations and videos about the hub should also run on GauchoTV screens in the library and student union, reaching students who don’t yet know the hub exists. Short, branded spots showing what the space looks like, what’s available, and how to find it. This is how students who would never search for “basic needs” on a website discover the hub organically.
Funding
GCC Cares has already secured AmeriCorps funding for its social work interns, that’s a meaningful anchor grant that validates the model. What follows is a landscape of additional sources worth researching, applying to, or at minimum tracking as the hub expands. Note that the federal funding environment in 2025-2026 is unstable: AmeriCorps grants for FY2025 were partially withheld by OMB, and the federal Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students grant program was ended. State and national nonprofit sources are worth prioritizing alongside federal ones right now.
The most accessible and directly relevant grant source. Swipe Out Hunger is the leading national nonprofit focused on college student food insecurity, and they run recurring grant cycles awarding $1,000–$7,000 per campus for pantry operations. In their most recent cycle, 70 colleges received a combined $208,500. Phoenix College (also in the Maricopa system) has received Swipe Grants in the past, which means the program is already aware of Maricopa. Eligible uses include food and basic needs inventory, cold storage, outreach, staff support, and pantry infrastructure.
Swipe Out Hunger has confirmed they will continue offering grants in the 2025-2026 academic year. Sign up for their newsletter to be first to know when the next cycle opens.
GCC Cares already has AmeriCorps funding for its social work interns, that’s the anchor grant that launched this whole program. It’s also worth noting that AmeriCorps funding structures sometimes allow for student positions beyond social work, depending on how the grant is scoped. The social worker is worth asking directly whether a design or communications student position could be added under the existing grant or a future cycle, if the work clearly serves the program’s community mission, it may qualify. Either way, the precedent of paid student interns in this program is already set.
The broader AmeriCorps State and National program could fund expanded positions as the hub grows. Applications go through the Arizona Governor-appointed State Commission. The FY2026 deadline was March 31, 2026, mark the FY2027 cycle for future planning.
The Arizona Community Foundation awards grants year-round to nonprofits, educational institutions, tribal entities, and government agencies. GCC as a public educational institution is eligible. Their funding areas include health, human services, education, and community well-being, all of which map directly to the hub’s programs. Worth a direct inquiry to identify currently open cycles and whether the hub’s buildout or specific programs (clothing closet, cooking classes, farmers market) would qualify.
Lumina Foundation funds efforts that increase the proportion of Americans with high-quality post-secondary credentials. They have a strong track record of funding student basic needs work, including the Hope Center research that documents the model GCC Cares is building, and the Amarillo College case study referenced in this brief. Their grants tend to go to institutions demonstrating innovative approaches to student success. The hub, particularly if it can tie outcomes data to retention and completion, is a compelling fit. Lumina doesn’t run a simple open application cycle, direct outreach and relationship-building is the path in.
A federal grant program administered by the Department of Education specifically for student parents at community colleges. CCAMPIS funds childcare subsidies and support services for low-income student parents. Given GCC’s population of single parents and the hub’s explicit focus on that group, this is worth investigating. Awards typically range from $200,000–$400,000 over four years. Application cycles open periodically, check the ED website for the next NOFO.
The only federal grant program directly supporting college student mental health. Awards support suicide prevention, mental health services, and behavioral health on campus. Funding is limited ($8.5 million per year nationally, spread across a few dozen campuses) and competitive, but given the hub’s integration of social workers and mental health referrals, it’s a relevant fit. The Hope Center has advocated for expanding this program, particularly for community colleges. Apply through SAMHSA.
St. Mary’s Food Bank is already a program partner supplying the bodega and grocery area. Many regional food banks also operate their own grant programs for partner agencies and campus food access initiatives, worth asking your St. Mary’s contact directly whether any funding is available for infrastructure, equipment (refrigerators, shelving), or programming beyond food supply. This is a relationship that may already be warmer than a typical grant application.
Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio have all established or are developing state-level Hunger-Free Campus grant programs, awarding $100,000+ to eligible institutions. Arizona does not currently have an equivalent program. This is both a gap and an opportunity, GCC and Maricopa are well-positioned to advocate for Arizona to create one, and the documentation in this brief (scope, audience data, phased approach) is exactly the kind of institutional evidence that supports that advocacy. Worth connecting with the Swipe Out Hunger policy team and the Hope Center, both of whom actively work with state legislatures on this.
Additional Notes
“GCC Cares Hub” works as internal shorthand. Consider developing a branded name that students will actually use out loud, like how Amarillo calls theirs “the ARC” and Bergen calls theirs “Bergen Cares.” A name with personality. This can emerge from the brand exploration phase, but worth planting the seed in the first meeting with the social worker.
Have the conversation with the social worker early about what imagery would resonate with the students who use this space. Illustrations designed by a student who has used the food pantry will carry authenticity that no outside consultant can produce. This is exactly the right kind of project for work-study students to own.
The social work team needs to be able to produce materials independently after the brand is established. Canva templates, set up with locked brand colors, approved fonts, and pre-built layouts for common materials, are the right tool. Build these in Phase 7. The brand guide should include a Canva setup guide as part of its documentation.
GCC Cares Hub Design Brief, Glendale Community College Digital Media Arts, Draft April 2026