Trueblu Inc.
TRUEBLU INC. · HIGHER EDUCATION MARKETING, BRAND + WEBSITETrueblu helps universities and colleges tell their story well enough to move a prospective student from curious to enrolled - and their own brand hadn't caught up to the quality of work they were producing for clients.
My role:
Creative Direction, Brand Design, Website Design & Build
Platform
Industry
Higher education marketing / enrolment
Branded video, photo, podcast, editorial content, website
Timeline
3 months
The world we were designing for
Trueblu makes branded video, photo essays, podcasts, and writing for universities and colleges trying to reach prospective students. Their actual work, the storytelling they produce for clients - was strong. Their own brand wasn't doing the same job for them.
Enrollment marketing is a trust problem before it's anything else. A prospective student, or their parent, needs to believe a story before they act on it. Trueblu understood that for their clients. Their own site and identity needed to prove they understood it for themselves.
What we were actually solving
The brief was a rebrand and a new website. The real problem was narrower: Trueblu's identity needed to carry the same credibility and creative range they were selling to universities, without competing with the client work it was there to showcase.
01
A brand that gets out of the way
The identity had to feel confident enough to represent a creative agency, but restrained enough not to compete with the video and photo work sitting on the same page.
02
A website built to show range, not just describe it
Trueblu's pitch to universities is that they can tell a story in video, photo, podcast, and writing. The site needed to prove that by showing the work, not listing the services.
03
Consistency across every touchpoint
Brand, site, and marketing materials needed to read as one system, the same discipline they were asking their university clients to commit to.
Success meant a site and identity that made a university confident Trueblu could tell their story as well as Trueblu told its own.
How I led it
I led creative direction, brand design, and the website design and build - working directly with Trueblu to translate their positioning (helping universities build engagement, trust, and enrolment through storytelling) into a visual identity and site that made the same case about Trueblu itself.
Timeline: 3 monthsScope: Branding + website + interactiveDisciplines led: Creative direction, brand design, web design & build
The decisions that shaped the work
Building the identity around restraint, not decoration.
Trueblu's value is the work itself - video, photography, story. I built the visual system to support that rather than compete with it: clean layout, a tagline system that stated Trueblu's value proposition plainly, and typography that let the client work carry the page.
Designing the site to demonstrate range across formats.
Because Trueblu's offer spans video, photo essays, podcasts, and writing, the site needed to show - not describe -that range. I structured the page around real work samples across formats rather than a services list, so a prospective client could see the breadth immediately.
What changed
01
From describing the service to showing it.
The site moved from a text-based pitch to a portfolio-first structure built around actual client work.
02
A brand system consistent across every material.
Identity, website, and marketing collateral now read as one system rather than separate deliverables.
03
The rebrand became a client-facing asset, not just a company update.
Trueblu started winning new clients off the strength of the new site and identity - the same brand built to demonstrate their storytelling range to universities ended up doing that job for Trueblu itself.
Outcome & Impact
The rebrand didn't just update how Trueblu looked - it changed what the brand could do. Trueblu brought on new clients after launch, work that reflects the identity's job: proving Trueblu could tell a story credibly before a university ever saw the client work. The brand is now established enough that it's driving the same outcome Trueblu sells to its own clients — engaged prospective students, translated here into an engaged, converting audience of Trueblu's own.