What can a student of art, design, fashion, communications or performing arts become after graduation? The answer from University of the Arts London cannot be reduced to a handful of professions, so the university has turned it into a list that can continue indefinitely in its first global brand campaign.
The campaign Make a Life, Not Just a Living, developed by independent creative agency The Midnight Club, addresses one of the most common doubts surrounding creative education. Creative degrees are still often viewed as a less secure choice, even though the people who earn them launch companies, develop new products, shape popular culture and work in industries experiencing rapid growth.
UAL therefore did not base its communication on the promise of a single predefined profession. The campaign’s central element is an “infinite job list”, a visual system presenting hundreds of professional paths available to students of creative disciplines. The list expands depending on the medium and format, emphasising that the same type of education can lead to different industries, roles and forms of work.
The names of professions are accompanied exclusively by work from recent UAL graduates, taken from the UAL Showcase platform. Instead of conventional promotional photography, the university used real projects created by its community, ranging from art and design to fashion, film and other creative fields. The campaign’s visual identity presents both the outcomes of the education and the people whose work is expected to shape the next generation of creative industries.
The title Make a Life, Not Just a Living extends the argument beyond employment. UAL presents creative education as the foundation for building a professional path that provides an income while leaving students room to develop their own interests, values and way of life. The campaign does not attempt to overlook the question of employment, but to demonstrate that professional success and personal fulfilment do not have to be separate goals.
The message is also supported by the business results cited by the university. UAL has ranked first for student start-ups for four consecutive years, while almost 1,000 active companies grew out of business ventures founded by its students. The campaign uses these figures to separate creativity from the perception of it as a hobby or an uncertain calling and connect it with entrepreneurship, innovation and the development of new markets.
Kitty Pemberton-Platt, Partner at The Midnight Club, explained that the campaign was shaped around the stories, ambitions and work of the students themselves. Rather than imposing a new identity on the university, the team turned its existing creative community into the main proof of its impact.
The campaign was introduced in early July in the Creative Economy supplement of the British newspaper The Guardian, while the global rollout began on 13 July. The ads appeared across search, social media, YouTube, TV, programmatic channels and out-of-home media.
In addition to London, the campaign is aimed at audiences in the United States, South Korea, India and Spain. The choice of markets reflects UAL’s ambition to position itself as a link between international creative talent and the industries in which students will build their next projects, companies and careers.
