POLIMI GSoM
Building a Brand That Works Like an Experience
Redefining a Business School Brand for Global Impact
Red Dot Award - Brands & Communication Design
Client: POLIMI Graduate School of Management (Politecnico di Milano)
Agency: Interbrand Milan
My Role: Experience Design Director
Scope: Brand Experience, Identity System, Digital Ecosystem, UX/UI
Engagement Type: Full-cycle strategic and delivery leadership
In Brief
- A leading business school with a bold new purpose but no system to deliver it.
- Academic depth. Weak connection. Too many confusing touchpoints.
- We rebuilt the brand as a modular, human-centred system ready to scale.
- Teams used it to align, design, and deliver across digital, print, and space.
- The award-winning brand works like an experience.
1. Challenge
A leading business school with a bold new purpose but no system to deliver it.
POLIMI Graduate School of Management, formerly known as “MIP,” has a top-tier ranking, but its identity didn’t reflect its ambition and purpose. Internally, the name caused confusion.
Externally, the experience felt generic. The goal was to translate the school’s new strategic direction, “shaping better futures for all,” into a brand system people could trust, use, and grow with.
2. Insight
Academic depth. Weak connection. Too many confusing touchpoints.
Research with students, alumni, faculty, and partners clarified the gaps. The school had strong substance, like academic depth, human-centred mission, and inclusive mindset, but none of that came through in how it looked or worked.
We uncovered two critical truths: the school needed to clarify its identity and behave like a single, coherent experience across physical, digital, and verbal touchpoints.
3. Change
We rebuilt the brand as a modular, human-centred system ready to scale.
Designing for a single device or input type is no longer enough. Technology has expanded customer journeys, channels, touchpoints, and branded experiences.
We started with human truths: what students, alumni, and businesses expect from a modern school. From there, we moved beyond a visual identity; the brand transformation extended into the digital experience, ensuring consistency across platforms and interactions.
I led the comprehensive transformation of the branded experience and its digital system rollout.
4. Delivery
Teams used it to align, design, and deliver across digital, print, and space.
This was a complete brand experience transformation, not just a rebrand. We created a holistic design system for digital, physical, and communication.
Naming POLIMI Graduate School of Management, mapping journeys, creating UX prototypes, and building a scalable modular system. The website became the central platform for interaction and expression, rebuilt with clear IA, modular content, and responsive flows. We used shared tools and early prototypes to reduce delivery time without compromising quality. Internal adoption was part of the process, with comms, tech, and faculty collaborating.
The result: a brand grounded in purpose, delivered through real journeys, and built for long-term ownership.
5. Impact
The award-winning brand works like an experience.
The rebrand won a 2022 Red Dot Award and helped POLIMI GSoM strengthen its position in the international education landscape.
The new experience is more accessible, human, and consistent across audiences, channels, and platforms. It unifies fragmented assets, clarifies the school’s role in the market, and empowers teams with tools they can actually use.
Internally, it gave people clarity and pride. Externally, it made the school more visible, coherent, and credible, backed by a system designed to scale.
The brand became a tool for action, not just expression..
Agile loops
cut dev time
by 1 month
5 audiences
1 unified experience
100%
accessibility compliance
in design system
"This represents a very important development for our School, part of the great journey of change that began in 2020, when we redefined our purpose and core values and launched a new strategic plan.
Working with Interbrand has been an amazing journey, a path of listening, analysis and co-creation that involved hundreds of students, alumni, prospects, and corporate and institutional #partners. I am glad I had the chance to be part of this journey, and I am extremely proud of the work we have done together as a team.”
Sergio Oliveri
Chief Communication Officer
POLIMI GSoM
A brand is how people feel, move, and act around it
You can’t separate brand from experience anymore.
When strategy, identity, and UX are developed as a system, the result is more than a rebrand. It’s a platform for future growth.
Ale