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For business and new client enquiries, please contact Brad Usherwood at:
busherwood@yieldbranding.com
416-565-7666
Student Life is a division of the University of Toronto and seen as the symbol of university “spirit”. It helps connect students to softer life skills that will not only help them be successful in their time at university but in life as a whole. Student Life connects life to learning. The division is composed of 13 distinct units that are responsible for providing the various programs and services that are essential to a rewarding student experience at U of T.
U of T Student Life provides all the essential non-educational programs and services for students. It operates with 13 distinct departments each with their own mandate to help and support students. The division creates and deploys more than 2,200 pieces of communication a year across multiple media types. The delivery of communication was inconsistently branded and took too long to get to market because there was no well-defined brand visual system that could serve the needs of the larger division and its 13 distinct departments. As a result, students didn’t really see or appreciate the broader value Student Life was providing, but rather they only valued the specific areas that were important to them.
Before Yield Branding began the design process, we did a thorough audit of existing communications, identified and defined the different levels within the brand and the challenges facing the division from an implementation standpoint. Based on this assessment, we knew that department stakeholders’ needs engagement would be critical to delivering a robust and flexible solution, so we facilitated a needs’ gathering session with the 13 departments.
Rather than creating just a visual brand system, we convinced Student Life that they needed their own identity that could then support sub-brands for the various divisions. This enabled us to create a visual brand architecture that gave each department their own identity and value proposition while being part of the broader umbrella brand of Student Life. Now students could see the overall value the division delivered.
We created a simple, but highly flexible device known as the “interconnecting frames” that would connect students to the departments and information that was important to them. Additionally, it included sub-branding around programs, a design system around iconography, all engineered to be fully AODA compliant and work across print, digital, ambient media and on promotional items. Guidelines and branded assets were developed to facilitate consistent and faster production.
The new brand launched in April 2019. Now communication flows out of the division faster with consistency in presentation no matter what media is being used. Departments require less consultation and are happier because they can now promote their own identity and value proposition. Based on our work and success, Yield was awarded the task of revamping the Student Life digital strategy and governance along with their important web presence.
“Yield was able to quickly grasp the complexity of our challenge and develop a branding solution that met our needs as the larger division while helping the individual departments have their own distinct identities. Now communication moves faster through our division with greater consistency and impact”
Tony Bowman – Director of Student Life Communications.
For business and new client enquiries, please contact Brad Usherwood at:
busherwood@yieldbranding.com
416-565-7666
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