TEDx University of Salford · Higher education / events
Event identity and promotional system for an independently-licensed TEDx event.
ClientTEDx University of Salford
IndustryHigher education / events
Year2023
ServicesBrand · Marketing
01Stage 01 of 03
The challenge.
TEDx events operate under tight licensing constraints. The TED brand guidelines are non-negotiable — typography, logo lock-up, colour relationships, the famous red circle — and local organisers running an independently-licensed TEDx event are expected to produce a complete creative programme without modifying any of those fixed elements. The challenge, every year, is to make a TEDx event feel distinctive and locally rooted while staying entirely within-guideline. Get it wrong and the event reads as a clone of every other TEDx; get it too creative and it falls foul of the licence.
The University of Salford's independently-licensed edition needed an event branding programme that would uphold the prestige associated with the TED platform, resonate with a Greater Manchester university audience of students, faculty and external partners, and travel cleanly across every promotional touchpoint. That meant Instagram squares, concourse banners, lecture-theatre slides, printed schedules, on-stage motion graphics, sponsor materials and post-event speaker reels — all needing to feel like one coherent campaign rather than fragments produced by separate hands.
02Stage 02 of 03
The approach.
The work began with a rigorous audit of what the TEDx licensing guidelines actually permit versus what they prohibit, separating the immovable elements from the genuinely flexible ones. Within that brief, a local visual system was developed — custom typography, supporting imagery, and motion-ready graphic elements — that layered cleanly on top of the TEDx core mark. The system was designed so that every promotional asset, from a 4K venue stage screen down to a phone-thumbnail social post, could be produced from a single design system without rework or improvisation.
Marketing extended beyond static graphics. A speaker promotion sequence was built to introduce each presenter ahead of the event, with consistent typographic treatments and motion templates that scaled across stories, reels, and printed posters. Schedules, programme inserts, sponsor acknowledgements, on-stage holding slides and post-event editorial assets were all produced from the same toolkit. Photography and video direction on the day reinforced the same visual logic, so post-event content rolled out without visual seams.
03Stage 03 of 03
The outcome.
A full event branding system and promotional asset library were delivered, covering pre-event marketing, on-day collateral, on-stage graphics, sponsor materials and post-event editorial content. The campaign ran consistently across digital and print channels — social, web, email, lecture-theatre wayfinding, programme inserts — and held together as a single recognisable identity from the announcement of the speaker line-up through to the final speaker reels published in the weeks afterwards.
The work supported strong attendance and engaged campus interest in the event, and the visual system stood up to the scrutiny of TEDx's central licensing oversight. The asset library was handed over for the university's continued use across follow-up content and future editions, with documented templates that allow subsequent organising teams to extend the work without starting from a blank page.
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