Project

SAGE Publishing are one of the world’s biggest academic publishers, with almost fifty years experience in textbooks and journals. More recently, they have moved into the tech space by acquiring start-ups focused on digital products that make the learning and research experience easier. Their philosophy of independence means they preserve acquisitions’ brands rather than swallow them into SAGE. However, this means the customer offering was fragmented and lacked an overall name or umbrella message. We were tasked with creating them, to add a recognisable personality whilst comfortably holding disparate content.

Insight

Helping work to flow

The digital products included were super varied, but all shared one characteristic: to make a student or researcher’s workflow easier. We dug into this concept of ‘digital workflow’ and realised it consisted of many small interactions – searching, downloading, commenting, sharing – in one (hopefully) smooth sequence. So we visualised that with a language of deliberately generic UI elements that could be merged into rivers of icons.

Naming

The name ‘Technology from SAGE’ made the relationship with SAGE clear, whilst preserving some distance in a way that ‘SAGE Technology’ would not. It also allowed us to use it as the end of a phrase, starting with a description of each technology.

The gradient colour palette was created from the colours of the existing brands, reinforcing the sense of Technology from SAGE being the sum of its parts.

Results

Website user numbers and new sales prospects are outperforming expectations since the launch in November 2021.

They say

“Transformational in terms of the impact we will have”

Martha Sedgwick, VP Product Innovation, SAGE Publishing