Hiding in plain sight

I was recently on campus doing early research—digging into materials, reviewing strategic documents, scanning competitive brands, and immersing myself in the landscape the way you do at the very beginning of the work.

That familiar phase: Lots of reading. Lots of data mining. Looking for signals that might eventually turn into insight. Every once in a while, you find something interesting that’s, well, just right in front of you.

Some of the strongest signals weren’t buried deep in research reports or tucked inside survey data. They were right there—hiding in plain sight. In a few instances, it was as simple as the words a peer institution chose to elevate in its main website navigation: arts, people, research. Not taglines. Not campaign copy. Just the structural choices about what deserved top billing.

In other cases, it was the imagery. The kinds of photos institutions selected to represent themselves on platforms like Niche—who was centered, what kinds of moments were shown, whether the emphasis was on place, people, or performance.

Those decisions tell you a lot. They’re intentional. They reveal culture. They reveal values. They reveal how institutions actually think about themselves, not just how they describe themselves.

We spend a lot of time in brand work doing the hard things. We analyze quant. We conduct interviews. We look for white space in an incredibly crowded higher-ed landscape where true differentiation is difficult and often uncomfortable. Sometimes, we just need to look up, because often, the thing we’re searching for isn’t hidden at all. It’s embedded in non-verbal cues: navigation labels, photography choices, design systems, graphic elements. Seemingly quiet, cumulative decisions that shape how an institution shows up in the world.

Insight doesn’t always arrive as a breakthrough. Sometimes it’s just a recognition.