The Global Teacher Prize
Brand identity

The Varkey GEMS Foundation is a global charity devoted to providing access to education around the world.

With the backing of major international public figures (including the two Bills – Clinton and Gates), they were planning to launch an annual award for the world’s best teacher The Global Teacher Award – with a prize of $1 million for the winner.

Working with strategic branding consultants BrandCap, our job was to come up with a powerful identity for the Global Teacher Prize. And we didn’t hesitate for a moment about taking as our creative starting-point the way that truly inspiring teachers create a sense of wonder in young minds.

Seeing stars…

But how we could capture that in a simple, user-friendly mark? An image came to us a in a shower of kinetic stardust; beautiful, highly emotive, and also just a tad ambiguous. Because whose head is it: the teacher’s (giving off radiant energy), or the child’s (being illuminated by it)?

We used gold to create a sense of prestige, and for added texture; but the mark isn’t reliant upon it (and come on, who didn’t get a thrill when you earnt a gold star from teacher!). The graphic power of the image works equally well in black and a white, on an old-school chalkboard. And a simple but highly effective YouTube video, supported by an extensive social campaign, ensured that the “Nobel Prize for teaching” – as it soon became known – achieved a very high profile, very quickly indeed.

At the time of writing, the Prize has just been awarded for the first time – to Nancie Atwell, an English teacher from Maine in the USA, who intends to donate the $1 million she won to the school that she founded. Now that’s pretty inspiring, isn’t it?
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MANFRED ABRAHAM
Founder & Managing Partner
BrandCap
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