University of Florida

The University of Florida is a big (over 53,000 students), public land-grant research university. It boasts a vast breadth and depth of institutional offerings: 16 academic colleges that collaborate across disciplines to make significant impact, more than 150 research centers and institutes tackling tough global challenges to improve the world, and one of the best athletic programs in the nation.

It’s a lot.

UF is a place with a lot of moving parts, and it was on the move — rising in the rankings, growing in its capabilities, and beginning to extend its reputation beyond the state of Florida.

Brand Narrative Video

A story of collisions.

Although the University of Florida was energized and on the move, they wanted to improve their rankings even more. We needed a way to turn all these proof points into a singular story that would help raise UF’s reputation, clarify its message, and galvanize its stakeholders in support of its mission.

The research revealed a compelling direction for the brand’s story, summed up by this positioning statement: “Driven by the joy of discovery and fueled by the collision of ideas, UF accelerates future solutions to generate momentum that moves the world forward.”

And as we searched for a narrative thread to pull the story together, give it meaning, and connect it to something larger, we eventually found the thing that could connect and focus all the energy and activity and impact of the University of Florida. They had momentum.

The brand platform started to come together when we defined what UF does — generate the momentum that moves the world forward. But it became more compelling, more believable, and more ownable, when we began to tell the story of how UF does it like no one else.

It’s a story of collisions. A jarring word, to be sure, but there’s something uniquely kinetic about the way that UF brings together ideas, people, and resources. It sends ideas off into new directions. Unites the people who connect different disciplines and perspectives. And results in a palpable, anything’s-possible energy that launches new solutions into the world beyond.

The visual elements of the story are a study in eclecticism, joining precise tech-derived elements with messy hand-drawn ones. Photos overlap and juxtapose to illustrate these unexpected combinations. And it’s all grounded by a backdrop of signature UF orange and blue, so there’s no mistaking the origin of all this powerful momentum.

A key component of our storytelling apparatus was influenced by Rube Goldberg’s complicated, multi-part contraptions. It’s how we show UF’s collisions at work: one discipline builds on the work of another, which leads to new insights and new realizations, which connects unlikely partners, which generates new momentum, which ushers in new understanding, which creates new possibilities (and even more momentum).

It’s sunny and optimistic, in a distinctly Florida way. It’s energetic and vibrant, like the people who live it. And it’s a truly original story that’s generating momentum of its own, and pushing the University of Florida to new heights.