EDHEC launches a new brand identity
On the eve of its 120th anniversary, EDHEC Business School has fully revamped its identity and the way it chooses to present itself. This comprehensive makeover, both visual and editorial, is part of a strategic overhaul guided by the goals of the School’s Generations 2050 plan. Through this new brand platform, EDHEC asserts a clearer and profoundly renewed vision, and lays out the foundations of a trajectory it intends to pursue over the coming decades.
Building on the collective momentum harnessed for the creation of its new strategic plan, Generations 2050, EDHEC launched the renewal of its brand platform with support from the Babel agency. The School engaged the whole of its community – students, alumni, professors, employees – in an in-depth reflection on the reality of its identity. Together, these stakeholders designed a new overall expression for the brand that is aligned with the School’s goal of delivering transformational research and training.
An independent and humanist model
Unleash Tomorrow. The School chose a new signature that embodies both its model – independent, not-for-profit, humanist, entrepreneurial – and its desire to unleash ideas and talented people to positively shape the world of tomorrow.
A Grande Ecole founded in 1906 by industrialists with humanist values based in northern France, EDHEC now positions as an independent and leading actor in European and international higher education. Holding the status of not-for-profit association, the School’s model is founded on producing research of real use for society, businesses and students. Its mission: to train independent critical minds, both disciplined and creative, and capable of setting out new pathways for the future and of reinventing business models that foster the common good.
“Through this new signature, we want to assert our model of intellectual, financial and academic freedom. ‘Unleash Tomorrow’, is also a call to accentuate our longstanding collective momentum and thus to offer new ways to research, teach, do business and manage. At EDHEC, the goal of our training is not to reproduce, but to liberate minds and practices”, explains Emmanuel Métais, Dean of EDHEC Business School.
Unleash Tomorrow also expresses the School’s future-facing stance and focus on future generations. EDHEC is convinced that the alliance between research, education and entrepreneurial spirit provides the means to build a sustainable and equitable future, by encouraging the emergence of new models that reconcile economic performance and the public interest.
A new logo inspired by the power of the collective
As part of the School’s first fundraising campaign in the early 2000s, EDHEC commissioned the Lille-based sculptress Nathalie Decoster to create an artwork symbolising the School’s identity and man’s relationship with the world. The artist duly imagined a sculpture in bronze representing a man moving forward, alongside a circle. Over the years, this representation has become a strong marker of the School’s identity and an immediately recognisable symbol for both internal and external audiences.
Imprinted with this heritage and future-facing, EDHEC’s new logo features a stylised representation of a group of humans. This new visual identity reflects the School’s collective energy and profoundly human dimension. Students, professors, researchers, alumni, partners… the logo represents an entire community of independent minds with widely differing backgrounds that together constitute the strength of the School. It symbolises the diversity of talent, the hybridisation of expertise and the spirit of openness and co-operation that drive the EDHEC community.
