Physical Brand Expression

Print is to reward the curious.

That was wisdom shared at a conference I went to several years back, and it rings so true for higher ed. Print is expensive, and more expensive than print sometimes is postage. It can be hard to justify a medium that can be just as expensive to deliver as it is to produce. But when you’re asking a teenager to make a 4 year, multi-$100K investment, having something to hold might just make it seem a little more real.

This was especially true when we launched our campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. Following in the tradition of an old school viewbook, despite launching new brands or arguably a new category, seemed imperative. It made our campuses tangible when they were construction sites; it gave the audience a way to go deeper and make permanent something that truly was just an idea. A page to dogear. A brand statement to highlight.

An Artifact you Can’t Throw Away

Swag has come under fire the last few years because it is, admittedly, wasteful. No one needs another tote bag, t-shirt, or pop socket. But every once in a while you do some across a giveaway that hits differently.

For NYU Abu Dhabi we made traditional cawa cups in keeping with the tradition of Arabic coffee. For NYU Shanghai we 3D-printed luggage tags, marrying “the future” with the experience.

For more than a decade we printed the admit packet for NYU Abu Dhabi in the style of a passport. It symbolized the global nature of the experience. It felt full of promise. As happens with these things, it started to feel a little tired to those of us on the inside. The text was brief and to the point, the photography was limited by the format. But in 2020, the NYU Abu Dhabi Commencement speaker brought her admit passport on stage – the one she had received 4 years earlier as a high school senior – and referenced it as part of her remarks.

Print rewards the curious, and some artifacts can’t be thrown away.