Olin College of Engineering

Brand and communications as forward-looking as this new breed of engineering college

Now just over two decades old, Olin was founded as the nation’s first engineering “lab school.” Immersive and hands-on, students start solving real problems from day one—and both faculty and students are engaged in the continuous evolution of the curriculum.

Olin’s deeply entrepreneurial ethos inspires and educates engineers to dream, prototype, build, and market innovations that improve lives, communities—and, ultimately, the world.

Olin functions today as a living lab to envision, design, evolve, and implement solutions that address our most pressing problems. The entire community uses this lens to reimagine every aspect of how they—and we, as a planet—can teach, learn, live, and work together in sustainable ways.

Olin’s mission and impact also extend far beyond the school’s campus. From the outset, the college has had a dual, intertwined mission: in addition to pioneering an innovative undergraduate learning experience, Olin is committed to sharing its learnings with the wider engineering education community to catalyze the transformation of undergraduate engineering education—everywhere.

Olin initially launched without giving much thought to its brand; upon the College’s founding, tuition was free, and that choice became the brand. When this model proved to be unsustainable, Olin needed to define and articulate a more compelling story to compete with other engineering schools. We were brought in to devise the college’s first—and still thriving after more than 12 years—brand, and we continue to collaborate on materials across functions and channels.

Objectives

Attract talented students and faculty to the nation’s only “lab school” for undergraduate engineering education
Initially, be successfully positioned against more established engineering schools
Develop a brand that “lives” Olin’s mission to re-engineer engineering education
Make clear Olin’s bipartite mission: a “lab school” for undergraduate education and a platform to engage other schools and educators in advancing new thinking in engineering education, worldwide
Achieve gender balance, and increase diversity in multiple other dimensions
Prove that the 50% drop-out rate for engineering majors can be substantially improved
Evolve innovative ways to raise funds—a challenge given the extreme youth of the school
Continually evolve a cross-organizational brand and communications that set Olin materials apart from other engineering schools

Collaboration

Grounded in broad qualitative research (including input from students and faculty), developed differentiated brand promise and supporting messages for multiple constituencies
Evolved and advanced the concepts of “engineer-innovators” and positioned undergraduate engineering education as a way to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems
Crafted a flexible, compelling visual system that is as energetic and risk-taking as Olin’s curriculum and students. The system, now twelve years old, continues to evolve with the college across departments and functions
Implemented system across a wide range of print, digital, and environmental initiatives
Helped position Olin as a leader in engineering education, nationally and internationally
Impressive results: 61% increase in applications across three years; 52-48% gender parity; ranked in the top two undergraduate engineering programs; among the most selective engineering colleges

Scope

Qualitative research
Internal / external communication audits
Brand strategy / architecture
Brand identity
Visual system
Print collateral
Web UX, IA, content strategy, design and development
Environmental graphics
Fundraising communications
System documentation
Ongoing communications collaboration: admissions, marketing, and advancement collateral
On-site photography and art direction

A new identity to build brand equity for a still-young school

Our first step, after an investigative phase, was to develop Olin’s symbol and wordmark: the forward-looking “O” both points to the school’s name and to the layout of the campus. While Olin blue is the school’s primary color, we wanted to build in variety and fun, and created a system of marks.

Imagery that puts viewers—including prospects and families—in the action

From the beginning of our collaboration, we’ve had the privilege of immersing ourselves in the Olin community to both art direct and shoot on-campus imagery for use across communications. A close-up, documentary-style approach ensures we capture the dynamic, relentlessly creative, magnetic energy of the community.

Narrative arcs provide a solid messaging foundation

During our planning, authoring, design, and development of Olin’s most recent website, we refreshed our high-level messaging for the College through a series of narrative arcs that frame the content strategy for the website. These messages speak to Olin’s leadership, values, and ongoing commitment to innovation—and continue to serve as a North Star for our collaboration.

Engineering for impact

At Olin, we advance engineering as a bridge to equity, opportunity, and progress for humanity on a global scale. We recognize and meet needs, create solutions, and leverage technology to improve the quality of life on our shared planet.

Leading transformation

From its inception, Olin has been driven to transform how engineering is taught, learned, and perceived. We pursue this goal alongside partners—educators, innovators, and industry leaders—who share our goal to make engineering education sustainable, equitable, and accessible for all.

Living the experiment

Olin’s pedagogy is rich in depth and breadth, and our campus is a 24/7 hub for experimentation and collaboration. We transcend disciplines, break down silos, blend art and science, and push the boundaries of research toward real discovery.

Driving equity

Olin holds diversity and equity as fundamental values in our work and in our community. We believe we have a critical role to play—as educators, engineers, and humans—in creating a more just, equitable, inclusive, and diverse society.

Community-building culture

Olin’s culture is dynamic, relentlessly creative, and magnetic for passionate learners. We aim to empower everyone in our community—students, faculty, and staff—with agency, purpose, and a deep sense of their identity.

Vibrant, unmistakably Olin admissions materials designed to differentiate

Crafted to be in sync with Olin’s ethos of experimentation, synthesis, and commitment to making an impact for the good, Olin’s admissions materials and viewbooks all have multiple unorthodox formats that stand out in the mailbox, on the kitchen table, and in the minds of prospects and their families.

Our first viewbook collaboration made a bold impression right away. The book arrived housed in a red anti-static bag that obscured one level of the cover’s big-type messaging. When the book was unsheathed, the black type and red type combined to tell the unique story of Olin’s approach to engineering education: yes, student engineers are working to develop practical solutions, but they’re also bringing a visionary, creative spirit to tackling the world’s most pressing problems. The bisected book pages continued the theme of combining attributes in unexpected ways by allowing the user to align different images, topics, and ideas according to their own creative impulses.

The current viewbook challenges prospective students with a series of compelling, experience-defining claims in the form of short booklets. Each booklet proves its claim through student and faculty testimonials, qualitative outcomes data, and compelling photographic evidence. Together, Olin’s value relative to peer institutions is clearly staked out and proven in a bold and recognizable visual voice.

Olin’s open house invitations give prospects a glimpse into Olin’s culture and community to whet their appetites for a campus visit.

Olin’s latest travel brochure adds vibrant illustrative elements to the visual system, bringing an extra dose of iconoclastic-yet-fun Olin spirit to a piece that needs to attract attention in a crowded, competitive college fair landscape.

Olin College has a unique mission, character, and identity as an engineering school, and Sametz has focused on reflecting our vibrant, energetic spirit in every aspect of our communications. Whether they’re working on an Open House postcard, an unorthodox viewbook, or our website, I’m confident that each piece tells the Olin story in multiple ways, and resonates with the audiences we want to connect with most.”

Alyson Goodrow

Senior Director of Marketing, Olin College of Engineering

Advancement communications that build relationships and foster investment

Whether it’s an annual report designed to engage and inform the broadest range of Olin audiences, an impact report that celebrates and stewards donors, or spirited materials to promote Olin’s Giving Day, Olin’s visual system is flexible enough to meet the needs of fundraisers and relationship builders, but distinctive and resonant enough to ensure all the moving parts work together as a unified whole to build brand meaning.

Olin’s yearly Impact Report is their flagship advancement piece and recognizes how contributed funds at every level are being used to continue Olin’s transformational impact on students, the field of engineering education as a whole, and on the world.

For Olin’s Giving Day, we created imagery-centric communications that put people—students, faculty, and staff—at the center of Olin’s philanthropic efforts. The informal, unexpected affect of the portraiture provides the recipient with a sense of what it’s really like to be on campus, and to be part of a community worthy of support.

It’s hard to miss these vibrant headers in your email inbox, inviting you to engage with Olin’s efforts to drive change.

A user-focused website that offers multiple “ways in” to the Olin community

We collaborated with the Olin team to plan, write, design, and code a new website that serves as a compelling “first handshake” for a diverse set of audiences, chiefly prospective students and their families, fellow engineering educators, and Olin’s relatively young alumni community. A set of five high-level narratives both highlight Olin’s value and values and provide a sorting device to guide users to the content they seek.

A dynamic and extensible visual brand system, documented to support communicators

Olin’s primary colors—blue and silver / gray—are supported by a host of bright, clean colors that express the vibrancy and vitality of the Olin community, and the diversity and depth of their pursuits. An extensible series of visual gestures are also symbolic of the Olin community and set a distinctive visual tone in communications.

The Din OT and Crimson Pro typefaces provide communicators with a wide range of typographic expression, allowing for clear hierarchies while adjusting the voice of individual communications to better serve particular goals and speak to particular audiences.