Making a mark on student unions with environmental branding

This transformation is largely coming to life through a design strategy called environmental branding. It’s a powerful tool for improving the campus atmosphere without having to completely reshape the campus environment. Extremely adaptable, it can be applied to a multitude of settings to infuse brand personality into your campus and make the student experience more engaging, rewarding and fun.

Consider this: imagine walking into a building and being met with an empty white wall. Now imagine walking into a different building and being met with a wall featuring vibrant colors and artful typography that says “We’re so glad you’re here!” Both walls give you an immediate sense of the culture within these buildings and the experiences they’ll likely facilitate. Which one would you gravitate towards? 

Historically, students had little choice but to adapt to static campus environments, but today, they rightfully expect campuses to adapt to student needs and reflect their identities, beliefs and cultures. This is especially true when talking about student unions. These buildings are the heart and soul of any institution, and to be successful, they need to include physical elements that are welcoming, functional and inclusive.

Environmental branding is a very cost-effective way to do this. Engaging your student body in the process—which is something we always advocate for—enables you to give students a deep sense of belonging, pride in, and ownership of, their union. Environmental branding can also act as an easily attainable first step in a larger transformation of your union; graphic enhancements are generally faster to make than other labor-intensive alterations that may come further down the road, such as renovations or building expansions. 

But, where do you start? How do you effectively engage students in the process? How do you capture the identity and culture of a campus community with visuals on a wall? And how can you make the most of every branding opportunity?

First things first: what’s a brand?

Defining the concept of a brand can be challenging because it encompasses so many aspects of an organization, both tangible and intangible. A brand is not just logos and colors—it’s not something created independently. Instead, a brand is shaped primarily by the perception others have of an organization. At colleges and universities, these perceptions are informed by every experience, feeling and emotion students have as they interact with your entire campus ecosystem—from buildings, staff, and classes to campus life programs, online offerings and more.

While brands can’t be manufactured, we can influence how people perceive them. Elements like mission and purpose statements, logos and visual brand identities can lay the groundwork for communicating what an organization believes, what they value and what kind of culture they seek to create. Environmental branding takes these elements to the next level by making them tangible, interactive and appealing to the senses. Within a building, spaces and surfaces become canvases for graphic design, technology, storytelling and art—all choreographed to reinforce key messages and forge deep bonds with students. The experiences that result become an inextricable part of your brand. 

A powerful example can be found inside Texas Woman’s University’s renovated student union. TWU is the nation’s largest university primarily for women, with one of the most ethnically diverse student bodies in the U.S. The institution’s purpose statement is incredibly inspiring: “Educate a woman. Empower the world.” Branded environments convey this purpose as soon as students enter the building.

The environmental branding seen in TWU’s student union also demonstrates the important role psychology plays in design. As humans, we spend most of our lives indoors, and the design of interior spaces impacts our cognitive abilities, mental and physical well-being, and emotions tremendously. In unions, we’re always looking for opportunities to create emotional connections with students by engaging them with messages and stories that positively impact the ways they think and feel, and how they experience the building.

Environmental branding at all scales

Like all buildings, unions are designed and built with long lifespans in mind. Financial resources are precious and major renovations are infrequent. This can pose a challenge when it comes to creating an atmosphere that always feels fresh, contemporary and relevant to new generations of students that continually cycle in.

Because environmental branding can be designed to be flexible and changeable, it’s an extremely effective tool in keeping pace with trends—whether repositioning a long-standing building, providing a minor refresh of a recently built union or planning a new building from the ground up. Here’s a look at how branding can come to life across different scales.

Small: This might focus on one, or a small number of high-impact areas to incorporate branded elements and graphics. This most often includes a visible brand identification at the entrances of high-traffic spaces. It could also involve decorative film on glass windows and large-scale decals and supergraphics applied to walls at a low cost and without substantial effort.

Medium: This could involve building-wide branding upgrades that bring together a number of media, materials and graphic elements to create a consistent identity. In addition to flat graphics on surfaces, it can involve fabricated and installed three-dimensional elements like branded signage, exhibits and feature walls that merge art, artifacts, technology and even nature (i.e. green walls). 

Large: This involves taking a comprehensive look at placemaking within your union and creating a strategy that repositions the student experience. Projects at this scale often blur the line between environmental branding, architecture and interior design, with branding elements not only coming to life on traditional surfaces, but integrated into the architecture, furniture, and finishes. The goal with these larger projects is to create a truly immersive, branded experience. 

Success starts with a strong process

Launching a successful environmental branding program goes far beyond discussions about what gets put on walls. It requires a thoughtful and deliberate process, fueled by student engagement and close partnerships with stakeholders at all levels of an organization—from marketing and communications to student affairs, affinity groups, admissions, student government and more. The aim is to create a program that represents the collective voice of your organization and your student population—and that requires extensive engagement and constant evolution. 

Are you ready to have these conversations? Reach out and let’s connect.