Pearson re-brands to show “100% focus on education”

Pearson announced a rebrand earlier this week, and intends to roll out the rebrand globally over the next two years. According to a Pearson video designed to tell the new “design story” the new imagine is designed to work flexibly within a wide range of international markets and cultures, age ranges and audiences, and to work on all different applications. According to a Pearson spokesperson: “Pearson is 100% focussed on global education and helping learners to progress around the world. Having a strong brand is fundamental to building our reputation and our success as an education business. Investing in the brand is about investing in the future of the company.”

Educational publisher Pearson has rebranded as it looks to grow its business to become the ‘world’s learning company’.

The ambition behind the new brand is to unify Pearson’s portfolio of products and services under one master brand, distinguish Pearson from its competition and to drive global awareness.

Working with brand design agency Together Design, Pearson decided to refocus the brand around the idea of curiosity and the excitement that comes with learning, which is reflected in a new logo that combines an exclamation mark and question mark to form the letter ‘P’.

The master brand has been created to work across a wide range of international markets and cultures, as well as a spectrum of life stages and audiences. It builds on Pearson’s heritage but has a modern design equipped for the digital age, as Rebecca Sinclair, VP global brand architect at Pearson, explained.

“Pearson is now 100 per cent focused on education, and we need a brand that helps us communicate our vision of empowering human progress through learning. We partnered with Together to create a brand that builds on Pearson’s 200-year heritage but is fit for the future, digital and accessible and defines our unique qualities as the world’s learning company. Above all, we wanted to create a brand that captured the curiosity and excitement of learning.”

The rebrand launched this month and will be progressively rolled out across Pearson’s global portfolio over a two-year period.

Heidi Lightfoot, co-founder and creative director at Together added: “Pearson is evolving, and its new visual identity needed to be technically fit for purpose and engaging on a whole new level. The practical criteria for change helped guide us to our creative solution.”

Together has been appointed brand design agency on an ongoing basis, to support the launch and beyond. The agency is collaborating with a range of specialists on different aspects of the rebrand, including copywriters Serious Oomph on the brand language, Nice and Serious on moving image, filmmakers Blueprint on brand videos, and creative marketing and advertising agency Mother on campaigns.