Western Governors University Visual Identity Guidelines
Western Governors University is an accredited, affordable online university with an innovative competency-based approach to learning, offering over 60 vocational degrees designed to help students attain better careers.
The Challenge
WGU is home to several specialist colleges and a general education department, utilizing multiple learning management platforms to develop and deliver coursework to students.
While WGU’s overarching brand is well-established, there were no visual design standards in place for learning materials. Given WGU’s fully-online format, the need to develop a consistent experience across learning touch points—from course to course and college to college—was clear. Additionally, we were tasked with ensuring that accessibility standards and best practices were baked into all guidelines.
The Solution
Kiosk conducted a series of interviews and workshops with academic and marketing stakeholders to capture the diverse pain-points, goals and personalities of each of WGU’s colleges. Through competitive analysis and collaborative design exploration, we were able to build consensus on visual guidelines flexible enough to work cross-platform and throughout the organization, while honoring the individual personalities of the colleges and laddering up to the WGU master brand.
Kiosk helped us unify our brand within our course materials, which helps our instructional designers, professors and students by providing a common visual language and unifies their experience of WGU. The Kiosk team is a joy to work with. We're excited to bring this work to life.
Joann Kozyrev
WGU Vice President Design & Development
The Results
Each of WGU’s college institutions, from the College of Business to the College of Technology, now has clear visual guidelines for learning materials, including templates and toolboxes for developing materials in multiple learning management systems. Included are guidelines for photography, graphics and other visual elements. The WGU team is able to create materials with more consistency, which builds trust in the content and greater credibility and affinity for the WGU brand.
Let’s Do Something
Amazing Together