/ BRAND ACTIVATION & APPLICATION
Brand in Action.
A brand really gets tested once it leaves the guidelines. This is a selection of projects where I translated brand identities into real world applications, from recurring initiatives and sub brands to campaigns, events and promotional work. Each one came with a different audience, purpose and format, while still needing to feel connected to the brand behind it.
/ GLOBAL STUDENT SATISFACTION AWARDS
Celebrating the student voice.
The Global Student Satisfaction Awards (GSSA) take place every two years and are based on something quite simple: what students actually say about their university experience. Their reviews determine which universities are recognised across categories covering different parts of student experiance.
The results are announced during a live ceremony, where universities from around the world come together to receive their awards and celebrate the people behind them.
/ MY ROLE
One identity, many moving parts.
Global Student Satisfaction Awards (GSSA) needed to feel connected to Studyportals while having an identity of its own. I kept recognisable elements such as the colour palette and typography, but shifted the language to feel warmer and more celebratory. Unlike our conference presence, where orange played an important role in helping Studyportals stand out among other brands, GSSA didn't need to compete for attention in the same way. This gave me room to use the palette differently and let the students and people behind the awards take centre stage.
For each edition, I selected a new face to become the main visual for that year's awards. The student changed, but the feeling of the image remained consistent: warm, optimistic and focused on the individual. Together with the distinctive GSSA logo, this became a recognisable thread between editions while still giving each one its own character.
After the ceremony, the audience changed completely. This was when GSSA moved from a private event into a wider brand awareness campaign. Each edition had its own landing page where we announced the winners and shared the numbers behind the awards, including how many student reviews contributed to the results. We also published a report based on the findings and the event, supported by video, social content and LinkedIn campaigns that continued the story after the ceremony.
The event photography became part of that too. We shared images from the ceremony and the GSSA “red carpet”, giving attendees a place to find themselves, their colleagues and other winners, while also showing the wider audience what the event was actually like.
The landing pages themselves are now going through another stage of development. We started redesigning them to bring GSSA more closely into the wider Studyportals environment, rather than treating each edition as a largely standalone destination. The goal is to keep the character GSSA has built over the years while making its connection to the main Studyportals brand clearer.
GSSA is an invitation only event for the winners and runners up, so there was no need for a large promotional campaign beforehand. Instead, the focus was on the experience around the ceremony itself. I applied the identity across invitations, event schedules, name tags, printed materials, pop up banners, roll up booths and giveaways, as well as the digital content used throughout the event.
The main presentation was one of the more complex pieces. Designed for a large event screen, it had to move between different parts of the ceremony while accommodating winner announcements, animations, overlays and live video calls with recipients accepting their awards remotely. It wasn't just a presentation deck, but part of the live experience and needed to work smoothly alongside everything happening on stage.
/ AT THE VENUE
/ BEYOND THE ROOM
Designed for the moment.
From celebration to conversation.
/ CAMPAIGN & REPORT DESIGN
Turning data into a global story.
The Global Enrolment Benchmark Survey is a recurring Studyportals initiative that asks universities around the world to share their latest enrolment data. In return, participating institutions receive a tailored report showing how their results compare with universities in their region and globally.
The combined findings are then published in a global report, giving universities a broader view of changes in international student enrolment and the factors influencing them.
This project needed a different side of the Studyportals brand. The subject was data, international enrolment trends and institutional decision making, so I moved away from some of the more playful elements of our usual visual language and gave the campaign a more analytical and considered feel.
I kept it recognisably Studyportals, but made the darker brand blue much more prominent. The globe became the central image for the project, reflecting both the international scale of the survey and the idea of looking at enrolment through a global lens. Together with the darker palette, it gave the campaign a more serious visual character that suited the research and data behind it.
The visual system also had to work for the reports themselves. I designed the PowerPoint template used to build and export both the global and tailored reports, creating a structure that could accommodate large amounts of data, charts and written analysis while keeping everything visually consistent.
The Benchmark also became one of Studyportals’ strongest ways of connecting with prospective university partners. This made the campaign particularly important from a commercial perspective. The design had to support the entire journey, from encouraging universities to participate and share their data to presenting the results in a way that made the value of the Benchmark clear.
The project later received a PIEoneer Award, giving us another opportunity to bring attention to the Benchmark. We built a campaign around the recognition, including a promotional video and supporting social content, using the award not only as something to celebrate but also as another way to introduce the project and its value to a wider audience.
/ INDUSTRY RECOGNITION
And then it won an award.
/ CROSS-PLATFORM PROMOTION
Connecting students with the right portal.
So far, the projects on this page have focused on the B2B side of Studyportals, where we were speaking primarily to universities and higher education professionals. But Studyportals also has a very different audience: the students using its platforms to find their next study opportunity. This campaign is an example of that B2C side of the brand.
Here, the focus was on students looking for Business & Management master’s programmes in the UK, directing them towards Mastersportal. The campaign ran across email marketing, social media, Google Ads and other digital placements, so I developed the visual concept to work across a wide range of formats and dimensions.
The primary goal was to promote Mastersportal and this specific study category, while also strengthening the wider Studyportals brand behind it. Each format therefore needed to make the offer immediately clear while maintaining a recognisable connection to the broader brand.
