Kat Donaldson

Karate Branding Project

Dojo of Champions

Services
  • Brand and Identity
  • Digital Product Design
  • Print and Publication
  • Web Design
Employment / Contract
Self-employed | Folkspoke

The Brief

‘Peter Hollowood Martial Arts’ required a formal rebrand to ‘Dojo of Champions’. The new brand needed to remain recognisable while simultaneously being perceived as a family-oriented club, despite its high-level athlete achievements. A new website was required to serve as a digital hub for program research, timetables, and membership payments.

Key Stakeholders/Audiences: This branding solution needed to resonate with:

    • Parents (members and non-members)
  • Students (children and teenagers)

My role

As the sole designer and developer, my role covered the entire project life cycle: strategic brand development, design execution, and front-end development.

  • Brand Strategy: Formalised a brand strategy to cover web, digital, and print, ensuring the new identity appealed to both the ‘champion’ aspiration and the ‘family-oriented’ requirement.
  • User Research and Strategy: Conducted survey-based research with existing members and developed a content strategy to improve enrolment and streamline communications with students and parents.
  • Digital Hub Design: Designed the new website to be the central hub for key transactions (paying memberships, booking classes, viewing timetables).
  • Client Empowerment: Created reusable templates for member certificates and timetables, enabling the client to manage these processes independently post-launch.

Outcomes

The rebrand successfully transitioned the business while maintaining recognisability and achieving the goal of appealing to a family demographic.

  • The new brand identity and website design achieved a balance between promoting high-level achievement (Champions) and a welcoming, family-friendly environment.
  • The website became a successful transactional hub, centralising functions like class research, timetables, and membership payments.
  • The creation of reusable templates directly contributed to improved operational efficiency by empowering the client to self-manage key administrative materials.

Success criteria

Successful formalisation of a brand strategy and delivery of a new website that streamlined enrolment processes and communications. The focus on reusable assets (templates) provided a quantifiable measure of operational independence for the client.

Reflections

While survey-based research was undertaken, given the dual audience of parents and students, I would have integrated user testing with the student demographic (children/teenagers) earlier in the design process. This would validate that the way-finding and visual language for program research were engaging and easily understood by the younger users, not just by their parents/guardians.