Open University / Brand development & strategy
Rebuilding
a brand
ISSUE
We were tasked with breathing new life into the OU B2B brand and help establish a proposition that speaks to very different public and private sectors. A challenge of speaking to one without alienating the other.
IDEA
With The Open University’s B2B rebranding, we started the process from the ground up, considering every aspect from the colour palette, right through to social media, animations, digital marketing, and tone of voice in order to create a customisable brand world to suit a wide variety of projects and needs.
This unique B2B identity, stands apart from OU’s core customer offering, not only visually, but also in terms of tone of messaging and language, which repositions them as workplace training leaders, and helps propel them to the forefront of the public and private sector education landscape.
Project
Brand development & strategy
Services
Branding
Campaign Creative
Digital
Strategy
Visual Identity System
Rebuilding a brand
By working closely with various teams within The Open University, and understanding their needs, we created a comprehensive brand that was able to flex freely across any sector, including design systems, templates and assets, ensuring consistency and clarity across all communications whilst speaking to an array of audiences through varying language and tone of voice.
Business with personality
We know that just because a brand is business-to-business, it doesn’t mean its visual world should feel cold or impersonal. Quite the opposite. As part of the OU’s B2B rebrand, we cultivated a warm, human tone of voice, which we felt would resonate not only with organisations as a whole, but, more importantly, would connect with the key individuals within that company.
A design system
Implementing a structured system is fundamental to designing and executing a wholistic suite of branded materials. That’s why we underpinned the creative process by producing a flexible grid base, upon which all templates have been developed across the new B2B look and feel including print and digital comms.
Animation for impact
Whether generating material for external use or producing presentations for internal comms, nothing is more powerful than animation. We’ve conceptualised, storyboarded and executed a number of dynamic animated projects for the OU, resulting in high-impact content, which is visually stunning, and rich with narrative.
The brand document
If there’s a single element that brings depth and cohesion to a visual identity, it’s the brand document. That’s why so much care and granular attention went into producing the Open University’s B2B guidelines. Every element from brand typefaces to iconography and photography have been considered and categorised to ensure a far-reaching consistency across the business.
Digital first
Maintaining visual uniformity across digital assets is more important than ever. For this reason, we’ve created and produced a suite of flexible templates across the OU’s B2B digital marketing, social media, and email communications.
