Setting the branding standards of more than 20 education brands.
Galileo Global Education is one of Europe’s largest higher-education groups: more than 60 schools across 18 countries, and an acquisition pace it has no intention of slowing. It wants each school to be a reference in its field: on brand as much as on academics.
The engagement
Scope
Brand architecture, common guideline base, talent pool of 15+ brand design experts, 20 rebrandings across every touchpoint
Duration
20 rebrandings, run in parallel
The stakes
When academic offers converge, preference is won on the brand.
Programs look alike, rankings tighten, and teaching is moving partly online. In a category that crowded, a school with nothing recognizable is interchangeable, and Galileo’s portfolio grew fast by acquisition. Each school has to stand out sharply enough that students and their families pick it over the next one. We assembled a pool of more than 15 brand design experts and rebuilt 20 school identities across every touchpoint: digital, social, physical campuses.
60+
schools in the group
18
countries
15+
brand design experts in the pool
Where the value was stuck
A standard is worth more than a style.
Galileo did not need twenty beautiful identities. It needed a shared floor: a quality bar every school has to clear, a brand architecture that settles how a school relates to the group, and identities its own teams can apply across touchpoints without calling anyone.
Brand architecture
How each school relates to the group, decided once rather than school by school.
Common guidelines
A shared quality base, so every rebranding starts higher than the last.
Local singularity
Each school keeps what makes it a reference in its own field.
The build · three moves
One architecture, twenty identities, applied by the schools themselves.
01
Brand architecture
Start with the group’s rules: how a school signs, what it shares with Galileo, what stays its own. That is what lets twenty rebrandings run in parallel instead of twenty separate negotiations.
Group standards
A quality level defined once, applied to every school in the portfolio.
A coherent architecture
Each brand’s relationship to Galileo made explicit, including for future acquisitions.
A common guideline base
Shared rules on type, layout and photography, before any school-specific work.
02
The talent pool
More than fifteen brand design experts, assembled to run twenty rebrandings at once: one dedicated designer per school, all working off the same architecture and the same guidelines.
03
Every touchpoint
An education brand gets judged on a campus wall as much as on a landing page. Each identity was built for digital, social and physical campuses, so the schools’ own teams could run it without coming back to us.
Results
20
rebrandings delivered
60+
schools in the portfolio, one architecture
18
countries covered
15+
brand design experts mobilized
1
common guideline base for the group
3
touchpoint families covered: digital, social media, physical campuses
What they now own
The assets
A brand architecture
The rules that place every school in the group, including schools not yet acquired.
Twenty identities applied internally
Multi-touchpoint guidelines the schools’ teams use without an agency.
A raised standard
A quality level that every future rebranding starts from, rather than negotiates.
A brand design network
Fifteen experts who know the group and can be reactivated at the next acquisition.
What we would do again
Look for what sets each school apart before looking for what binds them together.
Singularity is built school by school
When programs converge, dropping the group identity straight onto every school makes them interchangeable. Each brand needs ground of its own.
One designer per school
A pool works because every school gets its own expert, close enough to see what actually makes it the better choice.
Judged where families look
Families choose a school on a website, a social feed and an open day. The identity has to hold on all three.
Marketing is your most defensible asset.
