USC Dornsife College of Arts, Letters, and Sciences

Branding & Web Design

Dornsife College is the largest school at the University of Southern California with 80+ majors and 1,300 new students each year. This means that Dornsife is responsible for training nearly 30 percent of USC’s undergraduate population.

In order to communicate Dornsife’s message effectively, the admissions team wanted to create thoughtful and creative print collateral that tells a consistent story. Their team had a few key goals: first, they wanted to push the limits of what is possible, moving away from the typical higher education style, while staying within USC’s brand guidelines. Second, they wanted to reduce the amount of text used in previous materials and allow design elements to do more of the storytelling. Finally, Dornsife College wanted to rethink the way they talk about and display their many majors.

After a successful launch of the marketing collateral, Dornsife wanted to work on the digital experience of the Admissions website and create a new site for their admitted students to encourage them through the melt phase. These two web properties picked up design cues from the previous work, but were also intended to feel differently so that it didn't get stale as students were ushered throughout the admission process.