‘Made by McGill’: designing a brand platform marking McGill’s 200th anniversary
Laura Stein, Creative Director | Dominic Lu, Associate Creative Director & Senior Designer | Priya Mistry, Designer
Elana Gorbatyuk, Chief Strategy Officer | Clair Pouly, Account Director | Manuel Leblanc, Strategist
Layton Wu, Emma Quiroz, Zachary Radford, Copywriters
Production: Sid Lee Studio | Production Partners: Cult Nation, Les Gamins, Outpost MTL | Typeface Design: Coppers and Brasses
Full Made by McGill team from SID LEE & McGill University
An institution 200 years old, competing on the global stage from a nation within a nation.
Made by McGill is a campaign, a branding platform, and a rallying cry to unite students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors and the general public in Quebec, Canada, and around the world. Most importantly, it’s an invitation to McGill’s trailblazers, dreamers and innovators to come together to make the future theirs.
Designed to unite the community with a strong narrative, embolden students to face tomorrow’s toughest problems, and raise $2B to open doors to more dreamers and drive life-changing research, the new branding is itself determined, eclectic and optimistic, but above all, it is quite literally made by McGill. The campaign is authentically made by the community. From those who appear in the videos to those who lent their voices to the narration, not to mention those who performed the score, all were true McGillians.
Awards & Recognition:
McGill has it "made" in new brand platform
MADE by McGill - Gagnant Idéa 2020 - Bronze
McGill University Campaign is a Rallying Cry for Trailblazers, Dreamers and Innovators
Brand Guide
An in-depth and detailed guideline which streamlined all the moving pieces a university tackles, and how to apply MADE to all assets for the future. From print, out of home, internal documents, photography and even school swag (who wouldn’t want MADE socks…") the Made by McGill official brand guide was one for the books.
Made by McGill is an ode to the eclectic McGill experience.
An experience of self-made leaders. An experience that is built and made to be built upon. An experience that is not handed down, but collectively made by McGillians. It is a design system, an anthem, a video series, a website, and tools that are all distinctly McGill.
Habitat 67
Strategy:
Centuries of survival doesn’t come from doing things the easy way. McGill’s success has come from cultivating a space where success is never given or guaranteed. Everything good that comes from McGill is earned, learned, built and rebuilt. It’s Made.
The logo was inspired by Brutalist-style architecture found across Montreal such as Habitat 67, designed by Moshe Safide. Brutalism is easily recognizable by its angular, geometric shapes and the use of concrete as the primary building material, which mimicked our idea behind Made by McGill; being built for the resilient, rigid and hardcore.
