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BrandOS · Higher Education

A brand toolkit built for higher ed

A university isn’t one brand — it’s hundreds. BrandOS gives every school, department, center, and program everything it needs to stay distinct yet unmistakably on-brand. Built by the Viv Higher Education team.

Locked to your identity One brand, hundreds of houses Built for decentralized teams
The modules

What’s in BrandOS?

Each module targets a specific higher-ed brand challenge — starting with a logo for every department. Here’s what each one does, the pain it solves, and the opportunity it opens.

Logo Customizer

Generate on-brand logo lockups for every school, department, center, and program — a logo for every department, locked to the institution’s identity.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

A university isn’t one brand — it’s hundreds. Departments and programs spin up their own marks, and sub-brands drift into a mismatched mess that dilutes the institution.

The opportunity

Give every unit a distinct yet unmistakably on-brand logo in minutes, so the whole institution finally looks like one brand.

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Style Guides & Design System Documentation

A living, clickable brand guide and design-system reference — copy-paste colors, type, components, and real examples, not a PDF nobody opens.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

Static brand guidelines sit unread. Staff, student workers, and agencies guess at colors, fonts, and spacing, and the brand erodes a little with every guess.

The opportunity

Adoption goes up because the right way is the easy way — consistent materials across every office without policing. Because the palette is stored as W3C-format tokens with WCAG AA contrast built in, on-brand is also accessible by default — across every department, without an audit on every flyer.

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Site Audits

A clear, scored audit of your web properties — brand consistency, accessibility, broken links, and stale assets — in one prioritized report.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

Across hundreds of department and program sites, brand drift, accessibility gaps, and dead links pile up invisibly until they become a reputational or legal problem.

The opportunity

See exactly where every site stands and what to fix first — a punch list that turns sprawl into a plan.

Rule-Based Brand Governance

Encode your brand rules so on-brand is automatic, and off-brand gets flagged before it ships.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

With hundreds of creators across decentralized departments, off-brand materials slip out constantly and there’s no scalable way to catch them.

The opportunity

Guardrails, not gatekeeping: protect the institution’s identity at scale while letting teams move fast.

Digital Asset Management Support

We help you choose the right DAM, roll it out so it sticks, and extend it to fit your team — buyer advocacy, consultation, and custom development. We don’t sell you ours.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

Assets are scattered across drives, inboxes, and old folders; people reuse outdated logos and unlicensed photos that create real risk — and picking the wrong tool just moves the mess.

The opportunity

A vendor-neutral partner gets you onto the right tool, set up the right way, so every team grabs the current, rights-cleared asset the first time — faster work, fewer legal headaches.

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Campaign Kit Builder

Pre-built, on-brand enrollment campaign kits — ads, emails, social, and landing pages ready to launch.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

Every program builds enrollment creative from scratch under deadline pressure, producing slow, inconsistent results.

The opportunity

Any program can spin up a polished, on-brand campaign in a day — more applications without more agency spend.

Microsite / Site Switchover Tools

Templated microsites and safe switchover tooling for program launches and rebrands.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

New program sites and rebrands mean risky, manual migrations, broken links, and launches that turn into fire drills.

The opportunity

Stand up program microsites and execute rebrands with confidence — on time, on brand, without the downtime.

Template Library

A library of locked-yet-editable templates for flyers, decks, social posts, and more.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

Faculty and staff rebuild the same flyers and slide decks over and over, off-brand every time.

The opportunity

Anyone in any department produces professional, on-brand materials — without waiting on the central design team.

Approval Workflows

Clear review and sign-off routing with versioning, so the right work ships on time.

Why it matters
The pain it solves

Approvals bounce around email, deadlines slip, and the wrong version ends up published.

The opportunity

Faster sign-off and a clean audit trail — fewer surprises and far less last-minute scrambling.

Built on open web standards

Design tokens aren’t a vendor gimmick. They come from the same place as the web itself.

  1. 1996

    How the web works

    The W3C — the web’s standards body since 1994 — makes CSS a formal standard, joining HTML as the languages every university site is built from.

  2. 1999

    How the web stays accessible

    The same body publishes WCAG — the accessibility standard your sites are legally measured against. (Today’s WCAG 2.2 landed in 2023.)

  3. 2025

    How a brand is stored

    The open W3C design-token format reaches its first stable version — a shared way to write down brand decisions like color, type, and spacing. Tokens are how design systems already talk to each other; soon they’ll be how every brand stays consistent and accessible.

The same standards body that defines the token format defines WCAG.

So the format your brand is written in and the accessibility standard it’s measured against come from the same place — and BrandOS keeps them on one rail. Pick an accessible, AA-contrast pairing once, encode it as a token, and every department inherits it. Across hundreds of program sites, that takes real ADA and Section 508 risk off the table, because accessibility is baked into the palette everyone starts from.

W3C design tokens+WCAG AA=accessible by default

Tokens carry the contrast-safe values; our Site Audits and contrast checker confirm them in context, where text size and overlays also count.

Why higher-ed teams choose Viv

A logo for every department & occasion

On-brand lockups for every school, center, and program — plus themed versions for homecoming, commencement, giving day, and finals week. Generated in minutes, always locked to your identity.

via Logo Customizer

It can pay for itself

A logo for every team and club means more on-brand spirit-wear and licensed merch — revenue that helps offset the platform.

via Logo Customizer

On-brand, no bottleneck

Staff and student workers produce correct materials without waiting on the central design team.

In their words

What our higher-ed partners say

Real words from the teams we work alongside, across enrollment, brand, and communications.

They take ownership of outcomes, not just deliverables, ensuring our investments drive meaningful enrollment impact.
Anice Barbosa Director of Marketing, Graduate Programs Simmons University
They delivered high-quality creative and sophisticated, data-driven paid media strategy across our diverse portfolio.
Ben Miller Marketing Manager Duke University, Pratt School of Engineering
Viv listened thoughtfully to obstacles and partnered to find solutions for our scientific degree programs.
Natalie Lund Assistant Dean for Professional Programs University of Chicago
They are thoughtful, thorough, reliable collaborative partners in addition to excellent project managers.
Gail Fitzgerald Senior Director of Marketing Northeastern University, Khoury College
They skillfully tackle every challenge — from lead generation to content to analytics — with high-quality work.
Robin Staley Senior Director of Enrollment Marketing Babson College
Working with Viv has been rewarding and educational. They provide thoroughly researched marketing strategies.
Daniel Bean Head of Marketing & Recruitment Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Trusted by leading institutions

18 colleges & universities partner with Viv

Let’s talk

Bring the Viv Higher Education team to your campus

Enrollment strategy, creative, and brand — built for higher ed.

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