Brief Explanation

The concept of brand guidelines isn’t new; most established brands have developed comprehensive brand guidelines to ensure standardization and differentiation of their brand from others. But talking about education sector, you would rarely find any organization adopting such guidelines. Particularly considering Pakistani market, no educational institution has yet adopted anything similar Addressing the underlying problem confronted to COMSATS, we innovatively proposed ,designed and presented comprehensive corporate brand guidelines in the form of approved logo, font templates, standardized advertising grids, stationary design layouts, and other such methods of maintaining visual continuity and brand recognition across all physical manifestations of the brand.

The Brief

COMSATS (CIIT) presently has seven functional Campuses, six more in advanced planning stage and yet envisages expanding. Despite its presence in seven major cities of Pakistan; lack of coherent, distinctive and appropriate corporate identity was a major hindrance confining the institution to achieve any admirable position. With campuses spread all over Pakistan there was huge disparity in corporate communication conducted at each campus due to which the institute was trapped in identity crises having no distinguishable and uniform position in target audience minds. Campuses in developed cities were more recognized and considered better than other campuses in less developed cities.

How the final design was conceived

In order to establish a distinctive brand identity of COMSATS, firstly previous corporate communication materials developed and published from all campuses of COMSATS were critically analyzed. After repeated meetings with client, special requirements/ briefing/ liking and disliking of client were established. After conceptualizing the overall theme and list of items needed to be part of brand guidelines, the designers esthetically designed comprehensive brand guidelines starting from the smallest of the items to all major promotional items and advertising grids. These included Corporate logo, Corporate Color, Typography, Stationary items, Flyers & Banners, Annual Reports(others) and Grids of Display & Classified ads.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The corporate brand guidelines have enabled COMSATs to establish unified communications materials for its all 7 campuses. Using uniform grids in its display and classified advertisements, COMSATS ensured maximum recall of its brand along with reinforcement of its theme line "Making Difference". With Standardized and consistent communication, an improved and distinctive image among target groups has been established of COMSATS. As a result now it is getting more space and coverage on Print and Electronic media, Students and employers have shown positive attitude and also an overall an affectionate association has been established with business groups and governmental departments.