Anna Bartlett ▸ Co-op Experience ▸ Central Co-op
Central Co-op
Strengthening the co-op experience — brand, reach & research, built over a six-month co-op.
01 · THE OFFICE
One office. Three jobs.
Central Co-op is a new office, established by Northeastern’s Chancellor in 2024 to strengthen cooperative education across the university. Over a six-month co-op, I helped build it from the ground up — its brand and communications system, its social presence, and the research to understand what students actually struggle with. Two audiences (faculty and employers), one real stake: whether students’ co-op experience gets better.
“The transitioning into the semi-professional world is clunkily done.” — a student
INSIDE THIS FOLDER
Five kinds of work in six months.
One office needed a brand, an audience, a great deal of graphic design, somebody to go out and report, and the research to know whether any of it was landing. Open whichever you came for.
- Brand & identityThe system the office went out into the world with.
- Social mediaTwo accounts, six months, and what the numbers did.
- Graphic designFour guides built on one template.
- Editorial & photographyProfiles, treks and the least glamorous post here.
- User researchTwenty-five students, and the thirteen sheets it produced.
04 · WHAT I LEARNED
My first real client.
This was my first professional design role — a real office, real stakeholders, and work that shipped: a brand deployed at career fairs, a social presence grown 900%, and research that put student voices in front of the people who run co-op. Institutional design is three jobs at once — you build the identity, you earn the audience, and you bring the evidence. The most useful thing a designer can do inside an institution is make what students actually experience impossible to ignore.