World’s Best School Prizes

Individual teachers are often celebrated. But what about whole schools? Working as a team, schools can achieve remarkable things — for their pupils and for society. This was the premise for the World’s Best School Prizes, launched in 2021 by T4 Education.

We started with brand strategy: understanding the prize landscape, identifying what would make this new entrant stand out, and building a positioning around impact rather than achievement alone. Our insight was the ripple effect — the way a strong school spreads its influence out into communities, and from one school to the next.

That idea became the identity. Ripples radiate through every element of the design. Five prizes, not one — each aligned to the UN sustainability goals. We wanted the branding to cut through a crowded field of well-funded, long-established prizes from day one.

It did. In year one, entries hit 1,000 against a target of 750. Registrations reached 3,500 against a target of 2,500. In year two, both doubled. The Prizes reached 463 million social media users globally in their first year. Nearly 3,000 articles were written with a combined readership of 5.7 billion. Headline sponsors Accenture, American Express and Fundação Lemann committed to long-term support. The Philippines government adopted the best practice of a winning school and rolled it out to 1.2 million learners.

“I love our new branding. It’s allowed us to make an instant impact and reach audiences all over the world.”
Marin Maurette, Head of Prizes

As Vikas Pota puts it: “When schools thrive, the impact they make ripples out into society — making whole communities stronger.”

See our DBA Design Effectiveness Awards entry

What we did

We created the brand from scratch: strategy, positioning, identity and guidelines, in under a year. From a blank page to the NYSE closing bell. The brief was to build something that would give the prizes immediate global credibility — in a market dominated by prizes with far bigger budgets and decades of history. We delivered a bold, optimistic identity built around a single insight: the ripple effect of a great school on society.