ESCI-UPF is a university specialising in international business and affiliated with Universitat Pompeu Fabra. For more than thirty years, it has trained professionals capable of understanding the world through a global, critical perspective connected to today’s challenges.
The approval of a new strategic plan marked a turning point: it was time to evolve the brand in order to recover the full strength of its founding essence and, at the same time, carve out its own space within an increasingly saturated and homogeneous educational environment.
Challenge
ESCI-UPF had a strong and distinctive DNA, but part of that value was diluted in the way it explained and projected itself externally. The school needed to reinforce its uniqueness without losing its connection to the trajectory built over decades.
The rebranding had to respond to three major challenges:
→ Reconnect the founding DNA with the promise of the future.
→ Define a distinctive territory within international education.
→ Build a shared narrative capable of inspiring the community.
Research
The research allowed us to understand how ESCI-UPF was perceived both internally and externally, and to identify the elements that truly made the institution unique.
We worked on different levels:
→ Understanding the educational model and institutional vision.
→ Identifying the team’s beliefs, experiences and motivations.
→ Stakeholder mapping and analysis of expectations and needs.
→ Analysing the competitive landscape and the trends redefining international higher education.
Strategy
Based on the research, we defined the strategic space from which ESCI-UPF could grow with authenticity and differentiation.
International is a mindset expresses the central idea.
At ESCI-UPF, being international is a way of looking at the world. Studying at ESCI-UPF means training that perspective. A humanistic, multicultural, curious perspective connected to global challenges. A way of understanding the world that allows people to see opportunities where others only see borders.
Based on this foundation, we built the entire brand platform: purpose, positioning, values and personality.
The values define the impact the institution aims to generate: courage, diversity, dedication and empathy. The personality shapes the way the school expresses itself and connects with others: pragmatic, open, curious and versatile.
The strategy culminated in a key brand identity decision: creating two modes of expression, Institutional and Community, capable of adapting to different contexts while always maintaining the same essence.
Narrative
The concept that articulates the entire rebranding summarises the strategic evolution of the brand within the creative territory: A fearless perspective.
A unique perspective to understand the world and act upon it. An idea that connects directly with the origins of ESCI-UPF, while at the same time projecting the institution into the future.
More than a claim, we built a shared framework from which the entire community could express itself with a recognisable, open and contemporary voice.
The narrative work also involved redefining the institution’s own language. Rather than relying on the usual codes of the education sector centred around concepts such as leadership or excellence, ESCI-UPF began to speak from a more cultural, international and exploratory territory.
Ideas such as citizens of the world and pioneers emerge. Phrases capable of capturing the school’s attitude from different angles.
Identity
The visual identity translates that unique perspective into a flexible, dynamic and recognisable system.
ESCI-UPF Blue remains the brand’s main chromatic axis, now accompanied by a neutral base and accent colours that bring greater expressive richness.
The geometric shapes derived from the logo are the origin of the new visual language. The key is not the shapes themselves, but what happens between them.
The identity is completed with a bespoke iconographic system associated with different key messages. Each one is adapted into different formats: icons, stickers and patterns.
These elements are deployed across different formats and applications to give the brand consistency without losing expressive capacity.
Applications
We developed a complete ecosystem of applications designed to bring the new brand to every touchpoint within the ESCI-UPF experience. The same principle guided every piece: that the brand should be recognised with the same strength on the campus façade as in an email from the Academic Management department.
The ecosystem is organised into four levels: the foundations, with the brand manifesto and brand book, the documents all teams return to; the brand in space, through campus signage and the Fira del Ensenyament stand; the brand across channels, including social media, digital campaigns and recruitment materials; and the operational brand, with templates, the intranet, institutional documents and merchandising.
Brand Activation
A brand only makes sense when the people who use it feel it as their own. That is why we designed an internal activation process together with different departments across the school. The goal was not to hand over guidelines, but rather to create a sense of belonging and help each team express the brand through its own reality.
Through participatory sessions, the teams themselves analysed their real communications across four key dimensions: tone, clarity, experience and coherence.
Based on that collaborative work, we brought the brand’s personality and values into the day-to-day relationship with students and the wider community. The result was a practical, cross-functional activation that could be applied from day one.
Launch
To activate the new brand across every touchpoint, we designed a phased launch plan combining internal communication, applications and public presence. Every interaction was aligned with the new strategy so that the brand would be recognised consistently at every stage of the relationship with the community.
The new ESCI-UPF is an evolution. A brand with a clearer perspective that knows who it is, where it is heading, and how it wants to support those who choose to study with it.