Brand Positioning and Visual Identity
Brand Positioning and Visual Identity
Brand strategy and visual identity for colleges and universities
Every college and university has something that makes it distinctive. The challenge is finding the clearest, most compelling way to communicate it.
Solve helps colleges, universities, schools and academic units develop brand positioning, messaging and visual identities that reflect who they are and resonate with the people they want to reach.
Our focused, collaborative approach brings the strategic depth of a traditional branding engagement with a more flexible process and a shorter timeline. Whether you need to sharpen your messaging or rethink your entire brand identity, we help you get from exploration to execution without unnecessary complexity.
A strategic brand positioning engagement built for higher education
What makes your institution different? Why should students choose you? What can you credibly promise that your competitors can’t?
Those questions should shape your higher education brand strategy long before anyone starts debating colors or taglines.
We help institutions develop research-informed brand positioning, messaging frameworks, brand voice and personality, and creative concepts that connect what makes them distinctive to what their audiences actually care about.
Need a visual identity, too? We can take the work further, translating your brand strategy into a cohesive visual system.
Our engagements are focused and flexible. Whether you need sharper messaging or a more complete brand refresh, we help you get from discovery to decisions without months of unnecessary process.
Who do we work with?
Universities
Whether you’re a large university or a small college, standing out in the market goes beyond a tagline. We help institutions identify what makes them distinctive and translate those strengths into brand positioning, messaging and visual identities that resonate with the audiences they want to reach.
Colleges & Schools
Your business school, college of nursing or other academic unit needs a recognizable identity of its own, but you can’t ignore the university brand. We help you define what makes your school distinctive while building a brand position and messaging that work within the larger institution.
Divisions & Departments
Your department, research center or specialized program has something important to offer. The challenge is explaining it in a way people outside your walls will understand and care about. We develop brand positioning, messaging and visual identities that make your work easier to explain and harder to overlook.
How we work
What you get
A brand positioning exercise should provide the direction and tools to make consistent decisions about how your institution presents itself.
Depending on your needs, a Solve branding engagement can include:
Brand research and competitive analysis to understand your market and opportunities for differentiation.
Brand positioning that defines what makes your institution distinctive and why it matters to your audiences.
Messaging frameworks with core messages, supporting evidence and audience-specific guidance.
Brand voice and personality to help your institution communicate more consistently.
Visual identity development that may include logos, typography, color palettes and design guidelines.
Brand activation planning to guide implementation across websites, recruitment materials, campaigns and communications.
Not every institution needs every element. We build the engagement around the brand decisions you need to make.
Why Solve?
We’ve built brands from the inside.
We’ve spent years shaping brands and leading marketing for colleges and universities, so we know a brand has to do more than look good in a presentation. It needs to resonate with prospective students, make sense to faculty and staff, and give marketing, enrollment and advancement teams something they can put to work.
Solve brings together executive marketing leadership, brand strategy, creative direction and visual identity expertise. And unlike agencies where senior leaders pitch the work and junior staff execute it, our engagements are 100% senior-led. No junior designers or copywriters. You work directly with the experienced practitioners developing your strategy, messaging and creative work.
That means fewer handoffs, more direct collaboration and a more efficient process without sacrificing depth. We know how much a strong brand matters. We also know you have other things to do besides spend 18 months developing one.
Common questions
Can we update our brand messaging without changing our logo?
Absolutely. A college or university can strengthen its brand positioning, messaging and voice while retaining an existing visual identity. In fact, sometimes the visual identity is doing its job just fine. It’s the story behind it that needs attention.
We can also develop or refresh a visual identity when the strategy calls for it.
How is Solve’s branding process different from a traditional agency engagement?
Our approach is intentionally focused. We build on existing research where appropriate, work directly with institutional decision-makers and concentrate on the decisions needed to move the brand forward.
That allows us to complete many brand positioning and messaging projects on shorter timelines than an agency-led rebrand. The scope and timeline depend on the research, stakeholder engagement and creative development required.
Common brand and marketing challenges we solve
We sound like every other institution.
Our visual identity feels dated or inconsistent.
Our marketing doesn’t reflect who we are anymore.
Our marketing and enrollment teams are not aligned.
We don’t have a clear story that resonates with students.
Different departments describe us — and represent us — in different ways.
We’re doing campaigns without a clear strategic foundation.
Our brand has evolved piecemeal and no longer feels cohesive.
We need to refresh our brand without starting over.
Our campaigns aren’t converting the way they used to.
We don’t have clear messaging for different audiences.
We’re a college or school within a larger university and struggle to differentiate while staying aligned with the institutional brand.
Let’s give people a reason to remember you.
You don’t need another branding exercise that ends with a collection of words no one knows how to use. You need a brand that captures what makes your institution distinctive and helps people understand why it matters.
Let’s talk about what that could look like.