from logo to online payments: building BDE MMI Spark
When a student union becomes a training ground for branding, comms and product work
How it all started
When we started BDE MMI Spark, the student union (BDE) for MMI, my multimedia degree, at the IUT de Lannion (a technical university college), there was nothing: no name, no logo, no tools. And for an MMI student union, settling for a logo knocked together on Canva in five minutes was out of the question. We’re supposed to be the multimedia pros, after all.
So I took on everything identity and digital: the logo, the mascot, the membership card, the comms, the website, and even an online sales system. A student union is a small brand in its own right, with real users (the students), real deadlines (events don’t wait) and, sometimes, real money.
A flame for an identity
Spark, as in a spark. The concept came pretty quickly: a flame, with the M from MMI tucked inside. Simple, legible, and it works just as well tiny on a story as it does big on a poster.
For the colors, I swapped pure black for a very dark brown, which warms the whole thing up, alongside an orange, red and pink palette that echoes the flame. And to give the union a face, I created a mascot, with glasses in the colors of the gradient (the little detail that makes it recognizable).
The trap, with this many elements, is ending up with a patchwork: a flat logo, a gradient flame, a 3D mascot… So I set myself a rule: flat for the brand, 3D for the comms. As long as the rule holds, everything gets along.
The Spark'Pass, the membership card
The membership card is the thing students keep in their wallet all year. For the 2026-2027 edition, I went for a very visual front: a big gradient fill with clouds, and the name in a nice thick italic. It looks like a student union card, not a UI component!
Two practical details: the “Édition 2026-2027” line lets you see right away whether the card is still valid, and lets me roll out next year’s just by changing the color and the year. And a big solid fill is far more forgiving than a thin border at the printer, where the cut is never perfect to the millimeter.
On the back, the 3D mascot and a QR code that leads to the member perks. And yes, “perks”, not “partner offers”: the union doesn’t really have partner offers anymore, so the card might as well tell the truth.
From the comms to the website
An identity gets judged over time: posters, stories, event announcements… For all the comms, I stick to the same trio: the cream background, the brown and the gradient, with the 3D mascot as the headliner. The result: you recognize a union post before you’ve even read the text.
And since this is MMI, the union has its own website too. It has the members-only offers, with a search to find the right one, a button to become a member, the link to our Instagram and, when it’s on, the flower sale.
The tulip sale, for real
The project that taught me the most was the tulip sale, organized for Valentine’s Day with the IUT’s other student associations. The idea: send a tulip (white, pink or red) to whoever you like, with a little note, anonymously if you want, starting at €1.99. Instead of handling orders on paper, I set up a real online ordering flow, with payment through Stripe.
And when it’s students’ money going through your form, a payment bug is not an option: every order had to land in the right place, with the right little note.
Looking back
The student union is my most complete training ground: from brand to product, with no client brief, but with users who don’t hold back when something’s off. They’re your classmates, after all.
Above all, it taught me that an identity is only worth something if it holds up over time. Anyone can make a logo. Making the card, the stories and the website look like they come from the same place, that’s where the real design work happens.