Sector : Education
Services : Brand strategy, brand architecture and ‘about us’ statement
Sector : Education
Services : Brand strategy, brand architecture and ‘about us’ statement
University of the Arts London
Building UAL as a master brand together with its 6 Colleges
01 Challenge
Six Colleges were brought together to form University of the Arts London (UAL), however there was confusion between the UAL master brand and the college brands. What UAL stood for was unclear to many of its audiences and internally they were unsure how to brand new offers across channels, such as Arts Temps. Money was being wasted on developing too many new branded offers.
02 Solution
We undertook stakeholder research, audited the current brands and brand architecture, and benchmarked UAL against industry standards. We then explored and developed strategic hypotheses for the brand architecture that we tested in workshops with the college staff.
The brand architecture system was mapped, and a decision-making tool was developed to be more strategic and reduce the creation of new brands and entities. Five key drivers were identified as: timeframe, stakeholders, role and audience, equity (reputation and monetary value) and risk. These were developed into a decision tree together with considerations such as timeframe and whether addressing an existing, new or changing entity.
The narrative and College positionings were evolved to reflect the UAL positioning of ‘because the world needs creativity’, developed by Johnson Banks. We have also updated the UAL ‘about us’ statement to reflect its social purpose.
03 Outcome
UAL together with its Colleges continues to grow in numbers and reputation. It is second in Art and Education QS world rankings and entered Guardian university top 20 in 2023 and now ranks as 13th place for 2025, in five years UAL has progressed 32 places in the league, and was named The Times and Sunday Times Specialist University of the year 2025.
The brand team has grown from a team of four to a team of twelve. The team constantly use the brand architecture decision tree with staff on what new briefs are needed resulting in the number of new entities being resulting in cost savings.
“I could not imagine doing this job without the brand architecture decision making tool.”
Richard North
Associate Director, Brand and Creative
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