Creating the design system for Graduate Showcase 2021

With the COVID-19 pandemic still ever-present, 2021 became the second year of the online Graduate Showcase — a platform for our graduating students to share and celebrate their final work.

As the internal Brand and Creative Services team at University of the Arts London (UAL), we were asked to put together a visual identity for this year’s campaign. The aim of the campaign was to lead people to the Graduate Showcase platform and to discover the next generation of creatives.

The brief

This visual direction was inspired by the research put together by the team at Pentagram for the 2020 identity, representing multiple browser windows on a computer desktop as ‘stacking screens'.

This inspiration reflects the digital nature of the Graduate Showcase itself, and the predominantly digital space that our students had to create in during the pandemic. We built on the inspiration of stacking screens and visualised overlapping screens, representing overlapping elements creating new intersections and shapes, coming together to build the UAL symbol. This also explores how the crossovers and intersections between different creative disciplines and student stories make up the University.

Conceptually, the campaign assets start from a piece of student work which means all designs were built around the original aspect ratio of the image or video. The supporting information and visual identity are simply tools to direct the viewer back to the Graduate Showcase platform and find more work from our students. This also played out in ensuring student’s names, courses and Colleges were always at the forefront of assets and messaging, allowing potential employers to connect with students and the students themselves to celebrate their work and be recognised.

For example, on our Instagram channel, this concept played out well using carousel posts to collect student work by theme or ‘lens’. These swipe-along posts allowed student work to flow across multiple grid posts and be shown at their intended aspect ratio instead of a cropped or constrained version and encouraged the viewer to interact with the content to see more.

Application and roll out

The design system was then rolled out across UAL channels with a digital first approach. Initial launch assets included internal email communications, the arts.ac.uk website and our social media accounts.

Providing a toolkit for the design system allowed other designers around the university to adapt the visual style for their own Graduate Showcase applications. This was really rewarding as the original design team, seeing how the colleges interpreted the flexible design system and made it their own.

From Wimbledon College of Arts exhibiting in central London window displays, to London College of Communication adding colour and shape to their assets and London College of Fashion’s LCF21 exhibition, it’s been great to see teams interpret and tailor the design system and seeing the work around UAL’s colleges and the city.

See our colleges’ Graduate Showcase identities:

Camberwell College of Arts
Central Saint Martins
Chelsea College of Arts
London College of Communication
London College of Fashion
Wimbledon College of Arts

Developing the design system for the Graduate Showcase in house was a major milestone in the journey of the design studio within the Brand and Creative Services team at UAL. We have been slowly and quietly (until now) building a small design studio at the heart of the central University team and this was essentially our first big break.

The Graduate Showcase 21 campaign is intentionally high exposure for UAL, in terms of external audience, with the core aim of connecting industry with our students. The reach internally was also right across the organisation; students, Colleges and University colleagues – most of whom didn’t know our team existed, and who all, quite rightly, have an opinion on the design system of one of the biggest moments of the academic year. On one hand, it was great to know this was going to get seen, but also piled on the pressure. This pressure was a great motivator and cemented in our minds the need for good design, processes and principles to come to a workable creative solution which hit the right tone for the message as well as being practical and realistic to use.

Working in a such large organisation has its unique challenges and involves a lot of stakeholders. Having Colleges believe and invest in the design system was key in terms of take up of the concept outside of the central University team. As alumni and recent graduates, our core motivation was to do right by the graduating students whose educational journey and moment of celebration has been forever changed by the pandemic.

The outcome? A clear and flexible design system, 300+ unique assets for a larger campaign than last year, a great response from the public and visits to the site and a very happy, exciting new design team.

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