A Local Web Experience Within a Global Brand

Northeastern University's London campus needed a web presence that felt genuinely local, not like a subdomain of a US institution. As Director of Digital Experience, I led the ground-up redesign of the London site to reflect the campus's distinct identity while staying within the university's global brand system. The challenge was specificity: building something that felt right for a London audience without fragmenting the broader Northeastern experience.

Company: Northeastern University

Role: Director, Digital Experience

Timeline: Four months

Tools Used: Figma, VSCode, Photoshop

Problem

The existing London campus site was a completely different design from the main Northeastern site. It didn’t reflect the campus’s academic programs, student experience, or the cultural context of studying in London. Prospective students in the UK and Europe were landing on pages that felt generic and American. The site wasn’t converting, and the campus team lacked the tools or framework to fix it themselves. It needed more than other sites due to local laws.

Solution

Working closely with the Northeastern London marketing and admissions teams, I led a redesign that treated the London campus as its own brand expression within the Northeastern system. Using the global design system I had helped establish, we created a site architecture and visual language that felt specific to London while remaining unmistakably Northeastern. Plus, it housed all of the necessary files required by the UK government. The goal was to give the campus team ownership of their digital presence without breaking from the broader ecosystem.

Execution

  • Conducted discovery with London campus stakeholders to understand audience needs, program priorities, and local market expectations
  • Developed site architecture, messaging, and content strategy tailored to UK and European prospective students
  • Designed page templates within the global design system, extended for local context and content types
  • Collaborated with development and content teams across time zones to execute and launch
  • Established editorial guidelines and governance so the campus team could maintain and grow the site independently

Results

  • Delivered a site that felt locally relevant while maintaining global brand integrity
  • Gave the London campus team a scalable foundation to manage their own digital presence
  • Demonstrated that the global design system could flex to serve distinct campus identities without fragmentation

Related Visuals

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