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Designing a donor wall for a leading Sydney girls’ high school

Lately, we’ve been working with one of Sydney’s most prestigious high schools to create a striking donor wall.

We recently embarked on an exciting new project – one that taps into our passion for designing distinctive donor walls. In this case, the donor wall will commemorate everyone who has generously donated to the construction of an architecturally designed, world-class, mixed-use centre.

Donor walls are a beautiful way of honouring people (or companies) who contribute financially to an organisation’s future through donations. They can be sculptural, interactive, delightfully abstract, or even virtual. At BrandCulture, we see donor walls as an opportunity to create an art piece or focal point. Our goal is always to complement the architectural palette and support our client’s mission or values by echoing their brand identity.

One of our favourite examples is the donor wall inside Sargood on Collaroy, Australia’s first health and wellness resort for people with permanent damage to their spinal cord. We created an art piece that compliments Sargood on Collaroy’s luxurious facilities and pays tribute to its donors. Taking inspiration from Sargood’s distinctive pine tree-shaped identity, the artwork consists of pinecone scales in white, black and copper, with larger scales representing Sargood’s most generous donors.

Lately, we have begun to explore digital concepts, such as adding playful, interactive features to donor walls. We love the idea of using sensors so that as a visitor approaches the installation, light or graphics are activated. We’re also interested in making donor walls more inclusive and immersive, appealing to visitors who may be visually impaired, or more tactile and playful, appealing to kids.

These days, it’s possible to create digital donor walls that only exist virtually, which are affordable, easy to update, with no limit to the number of names that can be added.

Whichever path you choose, it’s important to design donor walls that are updatable, vandal-resistant and cost-effective to build, install and maintain. Designing something bold, magical or meaningful will say ‘thank you’ in the most mesmerizing way.

Below, clockwise from top left: Donor wall at Sargood on Collaroy, designed by BrandCulture; a unique donor recognition installation at Parsons School of Design by Pentagram; interactive donor recognition display by PUBLIC in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia; a ‘curtain of names’ for The Advisory Board Company, designed by C&G Partners. 

If you are interested in thanking your most generous donors with a distinctive donor wall, we’d love to share our ideas: [email protected]