University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Designing a brand and the attending brand architecture for an institution as large and multifaceted as UMass, Amherst is as much a political exercise as a design one. As the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system, UMass, Amherst has twelve colleges and nearly innumerable institutions and departments. Every last one of them wanted a say in how things looked and worked. A flexible architecture and visual design system had to be developed with which everyone was happy. Then collateral generated for each college and institution, a brandbook, campus signage... eventually totaling over 20,000 files created,