Taking a Brand Relaunch to the Students

Dakota State University (DSU) has done an impressive job of positioning itself as the technical and innovative university of the future. With a new logo, new brand standards, new identity and countless new innovations being built on campus, they came to HS to help deliver their selling points to prospective students.

They tasked HS to develop their 2019 view book and recruitment mailers under the ‘We Are Rising’ campaign theme. One of our challenges was to translate what that theme means to the prospective student: high career placement, technical learned, a tight-knit community and an affordable tuition structure.

How do we make the innovations meaningful to them? How do we get some of the country’s best and brightest to consider a smaller school on the plains? How do we best tell a great story? Our creative team went to task with a very tight timeline and a lot of enthusiasm.

HS wove DSU’s selling points into several different pieces focusing on academics, activities, student life, community involvement, financial aid and more. We also made the newly launched logo and visual elements central to the design. We, of course, wanted to represent the University, but we also looked through the eye of the prospective student.

Each individual direct mail component highlighted a very specific benefit of attending DSU with a strong call to action. Our design team even developed a customized printer die cut to resemble the newly launched DSU logo for the college fair piece.

When your calling card as an institution is innovation, your pieces should reflect that, too.