Syddansk University

From on-premise intranet to the cloud

University of Southern Denmark (SDU) has more than 32,000 students, 6 campuses, 115 different study programs and over 4,000 employees. SDU facilitates high-quality research contributing to new technology and better health for society.

Graphic designer in the SDU Communications Department, Mikkel Larris, remembers that, “Before Templafy, it was really a jungle for our brand.”

Before implementing Templafy, SDU’s branded document templates and digital assets were only available on an intranet, which many people didn’t use. The university is divided into many institutes making it especially hard to distribute and update these templates, images and brand elements for university staff.

Mikkel found Templafy extremely helpful for rolling out SDU’s refreshed brand elements, and for his role at the university. He can trust that all SDU staff, faculty and students have access to up-to-date presentation templates. With Templafy, it’s easy to create university presentations that include on-brand slides with the latest figures.

Now, when Mikkel is asked to supply templates or images, he can simply direct people to open Word and use Templafy to access all the images and templates he’s created.

“I can easily share the templates and presentations I create, which saves me from double-work. Also, Templafy’s integration with our Digital Asset Management system, Skyfish, makes it easy for colleagues to find approved images, which is a huge benefit.” says Mikkel.

Why Templafy?

SDU chose to do a brand refresh in 2016 to “clean up” its visual identity. The university’s design team created new logos, color schemes and font selections. However, SDU’s existing on-premise system made it increasingly difficult to ensure faculty, staff and students could easily access these visual identity assets.

It quickly became clear during the brand refresh process that SDU needed a centralised system to roll out the new brand elements across all departments, centers and research units. Templafy was the perfect solution.

Mikkel Larris, Graphic Designer, SDU Communications

“With Templafy installed on all university computers, both Macs and PCs, more people use on-brand templates and images. It’s easy for everyone to find the templates and digital assets they need. Now there’s no excuse for going off-brand.”

Since implementing Templafy, SDU has found that employee-created content is increasingly on-brand and consistently used.

“People are more engaged with the templates we actually have, which means our teams are staying on-brand and working smarter. For example, our meeting minutes are now recorded consistently because everyone uses the same template.”

Mikkel Larris, Graphic Designer, SDU Communications

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