fresh hashtags, familiar spirit: how east hardin middle school builds brand and belonging year after year

Every school year tells a new story. At East Hardin Middle School, that story starts with a hashtag.

From #BeEast to #WeAreinBeastMode to this year’s #BruinsLeadtheWay, East Hardin launches each school year with a message that reflects their culture, goals, and energy. The hashtag becomes more than a slogan. It’s a rally cry for students, staff, and the larger school community. It shows up on t-shirts, social media, newsletters, and school signage. It becomes part of the way the year feels.

But while the message evolves, the identity behind it never wavers.

building visual consistency into changing messages

The Alchemy Collaborative has had the privilege of designing East Hardin’s hashtag branding each year. Our job is to create a new visual identity around their chosen hashtag, while keeping it unmistakably East Hardin.

That consistency starts with the school’s bruin mascot, which we intentionally weave into every design. Whether the tone of the hashtag is bold, motivational, or directional, the bruin keeps it grounded in the school’s brand.

Each hashtag design is applied across:

Student and staff t-shirts
Social media banners and profile frames
Email signature graphics
Parent newsletters
School event materials

It becomes the visual language of the year and it never loses sight of where it came from.

why this strategy works

Some districts worry that changing a theme or message too often can confuse their audience. In reality, when done well, it can have the opposite effect. East Hardin’s approach works because:

The design system creates trust: it’s clear that no matter the message, it’s coming from the same school with the same values
The hashtag acts as a unifier, not a distraction; it gives students and staff something to rally around each year
The visuals are bold, memorable, and applied consistently, making it easy to adopt across communication channels

It’s proof that you can evolve creatively without losing clarity.

a takeaway for any district

Whether you’re updating a slogan, launching a new campaign, or testing out a theme for the school year, the lesson here is simple: fresh messaging works best when it’s supported by a consistent brand presence.

Your students, staff, and families don’t just notice what you say; they notice how you present it. When you bring in visual consistency and apply your brand across every touchpoint, your message doesn’t just land. It lasts.

Change the message. Keep the meaning. That’s how you stay rooted while moving forward.

want this for your school or district?

Let’s work through it together.

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the building leader's guide to local accountability

By Brooke Goff • July 21, 2026

Most principals are watching local accountability happen from the hallway. You don't have to wait for an invitation. There is a teacher in a school you probably know. Maybe you have someone like her on your team right now. She runs the PLCs. She sits in on planning sessions across grade levels. She knows which classrooms are doing cross-curricular vibrant learning work this quarter, and she knows which teachers need extra support to pull it off. When something remarkable happens in a student's learning, she finds out. She takes the photos. She writes the caption. She is the reason the school's story gets told at all. And she is one person. When local accountability arrives at your building (and it is arriving) it is going to ask for documented vibrant learning evidence, a Portrait of a Learner that lives somewhere public, data that shows your community what your school actually stands for. And if your answer to any of those requests runs through one person's head, one person's phone camera, one person's memory of what happened in third period on a random Tuesday in October, you have a fragility problem. Not a people problem. A systems problem. And it is fixable, but only if you start now, before the district finishes building the dashboard you will eventually be feeding. Here is what I want principals to know before anything else: you are not behind. You are not failing. The local accountability conversation in Kentucky has been happening almost entirely at the district level, and the assumption buried inside a lot of that work is that principals are naturally in the loop. That superintendents are passing information down. That buildings are ready. Most of them are not. And that is not the principal's fault. What is within a principal's control right now is whether the work already happening in their building gets captured in a way that will matter later. Not a new initiative. Not a new platform. Not a new committee. Three practices, intentionally done, that most strong principals are already doing accidentally.