About the Client

With its 28,000 enrolled students, the University of Zurich (UZH) is Switzerland’s largest university. Founded in the year 1833, UZH was Europe’s first university to be established by a democratic political system; today, UZH is one of the foremost universities in the German-speaking world. Made up of seven faculties covering some 100 different subject areas, the University offers a wide variety of Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD programs. In addition, UZH’s continuing education programs offer excellent learning opportunities.

One of the universities departements overseeing the internal process of learning is the departement of educational development. They say about themselves: The Educational Development Office is where competences, services, and processes from quality development, study program development and innovation promotion run together. It supports and assists faculties in their (further) development of study programs regarding all legal, structural, and didactic concerns.

About the Project

For the communication of this departement they searched for a new and unique pictorial language. The language should be within the corporate design of the universitiy of Zurich, but still be remarkable enough that it would stand out among the companys diverse means of communication. This task was given away as a pitch, which was won by this proposal.

The concept of this language was to take a tangram. The tangram is a chinese dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat polygons, called tans, which are put together to form new shapes. The tangram made for the educational development is a new one, made out of the shape of the UZH Logo, that already consists of geometrical shapes. The shapes of the tangram could be taken and used in many ways to form images, concepts and illustrations. It is their new language.

This pictorial language was extensively tried out and put together in a Manual.