A strong brand should balance current strengths with future possibilities.

Sommet Education
Brand Strategy, Creative Development, Team Leadership

Shortly after a French investment company acquired two of the world’s top higher-ed institutions in hospitality and luxury management — Glion and Les Roches — the need arose to create a new global parent brand for the two schools that would communicate a strong collective identity and value proposition in-market while minimizing disruption to each school’s operations and unique culture. The new brand also needed to reflect current-state offerings among the schools while being flexible enough to allow for future acquisitions that could expand the overall story.

I took the helm of a small, focused team at GoKart Labs that could quickly move through a remote discovery process to understand the identity, values, and ideas driving each of the two Switzerland-based institutions. Following a competitive scan and collaborative design sessions, we developed a set of ownable creative territories and distilled them down to arrive at a new name, identity, and visual brand language for Sommet Education, inspired by the high peaks of the Swiss Alps and the high ideals of its multicultural workforce. The identity and its underlying principles were warmly received by teams across the organization, which has since grown to include the prestigious École Ducasse culinary school in Paris among other global education entities.

Agency: GoKart Labs
Design Partner: Nathan Strandberg