GLS University

GLS University in Ahmedabad brings together a number of institutes that were founded separately and had each built their own identity over the years. From the inside that history makes sense. To a parent visiting on admission day, it reads as many organisations sharing one address.

The brief was to rebrand GLS Institute of Design, where I was studying. A few weeks in it was clear that GLSID did not have an identity problem of its own. A design institute cannot look like it belongs somewhere that does not look like anything. I widened the scope and spent the rest of the two months on the university.

The argument was about standing. GLS had the range of a university and was being read as a cluster of local colleges, and nothing about the way it presented itself corrected that. An institution that wants to be read internationally has to look like one institution first.

Three decisions followed.

• One mark for the university, with each institute named in type rather than given its own symbol. Families remember one mark.
• A single colour ramp instead of a palette of unrelated colours, so each institute has its own colour and still looks part of one place.
• A wide, heavy typeface for signs, chosen for legibility at a distance and at an angle, and a plainer face for anything read up close.

I also walked the main routes from each gate to each institute and noted every point where someone would have to make a decision. The signage was planned from that list before the identity was finished, so the identity had to fit how signs are actually read. That constraint made it better.

I would have tested the signage at night much earlier. Some of the most important journeys on a campus happen after dark.