Case study · 2024–2026

Walk N Roll — Countywide School Program Identity

One identity, twenty-two school mascots. A fixed frame with a variable slot, so every campus in Contra Costa gets a Walk N Roll mark that looks like their own school — banners, keytags and stickers in English and Spanish.

Role: Brand Designer · Illustrator
Client: Contra Costa Transportation Authority · 511 Contra Costa
Medium: Identity System · Illustration · Print · Environmental · Bilingual
Date: 2024–2026

Challenge

Getting kids to walk and roll to school is a community problem, not a marketing one — it only works if a school feels ownership of it. A single county-wide mark would have been cheaper and would have been ignored. Every campus already has a mascot the kids actually care about, and the program had to arrive looking like it belonged to their school while still reading as one countywide initiative to the agencies funding it.

Approach

Built the identity as a fixed frame with one variable slot. The sunburst, the fat-tire bike, the CCTA pennant, the wordmark and the tagline never move; the mascot riding the bike and the school name below it change per campus. Some mascots were adapted from a school's existing mark, others drawn from scratch where none was usable — twenty-two in all, each in a helmet, each on the same bike. Every school ships the full kit: full-color, dark, light and outlined lockups, a bike-only and sun-only mark, a circle badge with room for sponsors, and a wordmark. The collateral runs on the same rails — 6×3 campus banners in English and Spanish with a QR straight to registration, a per-school keytag scanned at the gate each Wednesday, and a shared sticker pack.

Outcome

Twenty-two schools across Contra Costa launched on one system between 2024 and 2026, each with a mascot its students recognize on sight. Because the frame is fixed, adding a school is an illustration and a name line rather than a new design — which is what let the program scale past a pilot without a designer gating every campus.

Supporting work

The master mark, and the twenty-two schools built off it — same frame every time, different rider.

Walk N Roll school mascot illustrations — Coyote, dino, star, viking, wren, tiger, gator, roadrunner — some adapted from a school’s own mark, others drawn from scratch.

Walk N Roll 6x3 school banners in English and Spanish — 6×3 campus banners, English and Spanish, QR straight to registration.

Walk N Roll per-school student keytags — The keytag each student carries, in their school’s colors — scanned at the gate every Wednesday.

Walk N Roll sticker pack — The shared 5×7 sticker sheet — the part the kids are actually in it for.