Brand Identity Design
From the smallest college to the largest university, growth depends on a brand that inspires trust and delivers opportunity.
Create a cohesive visual and verbal identity that captures your institution’s unique history, mission, and promise.
Stand out from peer institutions with a brand system that signals quality, culture, and fit to students, parents, alums, faculty, and staff.
Establish a shared language and unified visuals that bring marketing, admissions, advancement, and leadership onto the same page.
Ensure every touchpoint—from your website to your sweatshirts—reinforces a clear, credible, and consistent message that builds confidence and recognition over time.
Discover your potential in days, not months.
Need to move fast? Consider potent consulting. We can help research a critical issue, uncover quick wins, and provide a fresh perspective to help you get unstuck fast.
These short engagements range from a day to a couple of weeks and are led by our founder. You can expect a burst of ideas and insights, tailored to your needs.
Brand Identity Design for Higher Education
Uncover audience insights, peer benchmarks, and institutional strengths to ground the brand in authenticity.
Benchmark peer institutions to define enrollment advantages and differentiation.
Define how your college stands apart in a crowded market and why it matters to students.
Build a hierarchy of key messages that align enrollment and admissions, with marketing.
Guide mergers and rebrands with research, ideation, and consensus-building around a name that will endure.
Translate positioning into a cohesive system of logos, colors, and typography that convey credibility.
Design a logo that conveys your institution’s history while appealing to new generations.
Develop a color palette and color systems that connect your history and brand qualities to attract applicants.
Select typefaces that convey your institution’s identity and work across channels and platforms, from websites and digital assets to uniforms and campus signage.
Develop a design system that incorporates iconography, graphics, and a unique POV for images that bring student stories and campus culture to life.
Craft messaging that speaks to students, reassures parents, and earns trust.
Realign your identity to reflect the college you are today, from research to rollout.
Capture the college’s promise in a tagline that inspires action and loyalty.
Design standardized templates for letterhead, business cards, and envelopes.
Design branded templates for TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook posts to ensure continuity.
Extend identity into signage, tours, open houses, and recruiting fairs for immersive experiences.
Roll out the new identity across every channel to build momentum from awareness to enrollment.
Equip admissions and marketing teams with brand standards that model appropriate use and protect brand consistency.
Design branded clothing, mugs, and accessories that amplify the brand across the campus and beyond.
Why Choose Potent?
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Experience.
We’ve been helping higher ed clients since 2001. In that time, we’ve enabled colleges to leverage the Web, adopt Social Media, and navigate AI.
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Reliability.
We keep our promises. When you ask us to do something, you know it’s getting done.
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Results.
We know how to get the most from your budget, regardless of size.
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Team.
We have an exceptional team of professionals who wake up ready to solve your toughest problems.
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Transparency.
We will always give it to you straight, from strategic recommendations to performance reporting.
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Longevity.
We’re here to stay. We’ve been serving some clients for over two decades.
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Exclusivity.
When you work with us, we’re not working with your competitors.
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Curious.
We approach every new client with a fresh perspective, ready to dive into the details and imagine your greatest possibilities.
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Attention.
We are not a volume agency. We invest our time in a small roster of clients whom we believe are ready to grow.
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Partnership.
Like our parent company, Partners Marketing Group, we’re committed to building trusted relationships.
Case Study
Unlocking the Potential of a Historic Brand Marching to Their Own Drum
Learn how this historic institution reversed enrollment decline through digital strategy, upgraded web experiences, and automation—driving growth, reducing costs, and renewing the brand.
Case Study
Science + SEO: A Powerful Reaction
Emory’s Pharmacology graduate degree program had the research credentials, but not the national visibility. Learn how targeted digital marketing helped them reach elite applicants across the country.
Frequently Asked Questions
A rebrand clarifies your value proposition, aligns messaging with prospective student priorities, and presents a contemporary image that stands out among peer institutions.
Cost varies with scope: a small identity program ranges from $10,000 to $20,000 for a logo redesign with a brand style guide defining the color palette, typography, image assets and brand usage standards. A more comprehensive college brand identity program that includes stakeholder research, sub-marks, an extended visual identity with patterns and iconography, a strategic messaging framework, and standards guide with examples of digital and print templates and signage basics can cost upwards of $50,000. Premium institutional branding that incorporates all of the above plus extensive collateral (viewbooks, banners, environmental design, wayfinding, merchandising), rollout strategy, governance framework, and custom web visuals may start in the low six figures. In addition to design costs, institutions must also consider the cost of updating communication assets, signage, vehicles, uniforms, merchandise and more.
A college rebrand can take 6–18 months. Factors that most impact the timeline are scope of work (a basic redesign may take as little as a few months, whereas a comprehensive rebrand often takes up to a year), access to and availability of stakeholders, and the institution’s ability to make decisions and build consensus.
We engage stakeholders early in the process through interviews and surveys to identify core values, authenticity, and heritage. Not only does this identify sacred cows and requirements, it uncovers brand stories and amplifies what makes your school special.
In many cases, it’s critical to retain or reinterpret key visual elements such as seals, mottos, shapes, and colors. We weave institutional history into the brand narrative to honor legacy while modernizing. By involving a wide community of stakeholders early on, we can align the brand identity concepts with community expectations. Institutional rebranding is challenging because it represents significant change. We address this through thoughtful brand launches that build excitement and support, and avoid pushback.
Along with a Brand Standards Guide, which provides guidelines and clear examples for appropriate use, establish a governance framework with approval workflows, brand stewards, and an accessible asset library. Providing templates and tools that already use brand assets appropriately helps avoid end users creating their own interpretations of the brand.
By tracking indicators such as inquiries, applications, donor participation, website engagement, and brand awareness surveys before and after launch, colleges can measure brand lift and determine growth.
Conduct a trademark search early, register key brand assets, and publish clear usage policies to prevent unauthorized use.
Let’s Talk
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