7,000+ Students. One Enduring Brand.
The Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University offers professional-quality leader development to every Rice student, but its identity did not clearly express that inclusive promise. Savage developed a brand strategy and visual system around the idea that leadership looks different in every person.Applied across student recruitment materials, the brand gave Doerr a distinctive, inclusive way to invite students who might not yet see themselves as leaders. Years later, that core idea and original campaign language remain part of how the Institute presents itself to students.
Leadership shows up
in the everyday.
Every student arrives
with a different spark.
have participated since the Institute’s founding
complete Doerr’s program-match survey. 20% of first-year students subsequently sign up for and complete one or more Doerr programs during their freshman term
Leadership is not
a course you take.
It’s a spark you find.
Doerr develops all Rice students who want to increase their capacity to lead, no matter how young or inexperienced they might be.
A leadership opportunity for every student needed a brand every student could see themselves in.
Doerr was created to develop leadership capacity across the Rice student body, including students with no formal leadership experience. Although it had an established place within the university, it lacked a distinctive brand for its individualized approach.
The Institute needed to reach students who might never have considered leadership development to be for them.
Savage built the brand around each student’s unique capacity to lead.
The Doerr model: we help you identify and understand the unique essence of leadership within you, and develop it through an individualized approach.
Traditional thinking: you can become a leader by taking a prescribed series of courses. One path, one shape, one outcome.
The Doerr model: we help you identify and understand the unique essence of leadership within you, and develop it through an individualized approach.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or extrovert, creative or analytical. The truth is, everyone has the essence of leadership, that spark, within them.The Strategic Platform
Make the spark
something you can see.
If leadership lives inside every student in a different shape, the brand couldn’t look uniform. That essence varies from person to person, and the path toward it is rarely straight. The shape leadership takes for one student may look nothing like another’s. So we built a visual language out of four moves, each one designed to say this is yours, not ours.
Bold washes for the essence.
Organic shape and shifting color, standing in for the spark inside each student.
See yourself in the frame.
Real students, drawn from their own words and their own achievements.
The path is rarely straight.
Hand-drawn lines tracing the journeys students actually take.
Real students.
Real campus.
Vivid, mostly candid photography demonstrates participants’ experience on campus: in conversation with peers or leader development coaches, while studying, or putting acquired leadership skills into action.
No stock. No staged boardrooms. The people in the campaign are the people the campaign is for.
One profile.
A hundred definitions.
Each silhouette is built from a real student’s own words: their major, their teams, their fellowship, the leadership quality they most admire. The type fills the head because that’s where the essence lives, and it runs to the edges because no single frame holds all of it.
Doerr’s programs are human-centered. Talking about the benefits is one thing; seeing yourself in another student, with similar characteristics, cultural background, and class experience, is far more persuasive.
A range of diverse student silhouettes ran across the campaign for exactly that reason: so a participant could look at one and think, “maybe this is for me too.”
We don’t define leadership for you. You create your own definition and strategy to become the leader you wish to be.Doerr Institute for New Leaders // Brand Promise
The core brand idea endured as participation expanded.
Doerr’s growth reflects many factors, including the strength and accessibility of its programs and sustained student outreach. Savage gave the Institute a clear, inclusive way to express that work. The original campaign line, “Become the leader you were meant to be,” remains prominent on Doerr’s website today.
Work Gallery
This experience challenged me to think critically and improved my confidence in myself as a leader.Rebecca Chen // Doerr Participant, Rice University
A program students
could see themselves in.
Doerr moved from a name inside the Rice nomenclature to a brand with its own voice, mark, and point of view, distinct from the university and unmistakably part of it.
Washes, silhouettes, linework, and photography combine differently in every application, so the brand stays recognizable without ever repeating itself.
Every piece was built to land the same way: not “here is our program,” but “maybe this is for me too.”
Build a brand more people
can see themselves in.
When growth depends on reaching more of the right people, Savage can clarify what makes the opportunity distinct and build a brand that invites them in.