Kaplan — Corporate EdTech Illustration & Digital Asset System
Digital Illustration, Graphic Design
2026
Designer & Illustrator
Client Name
Kaplan Professional Education
Credit
Digital Illustration & Layout Design: Aprar design
Project
A suite of digital assets, vector illustrations, and structured banner layouts developed for corporate educational platforms.
Request
Build a scalable vector illustration system to represent complex student journeys and corporate work environments.
Strictly adhere to a highly regulated corporate brand color palette with fixed tint thresholds across all graphics.
Strict application of the Creative Cloud library ('KUK brand Colour Palette') spanning 7 specific pastel/light ranges and 9 authoritative Core Colours.
Design custom title cards and presentation banners utilizing specialized textures and digital patterns.
Maintain complete anonymity within character designs by omitting facial features, shifting the narrative focus entirely onto the environment and actions.
Design Concept
Restricted Brand Geometry & Faceless Characters
Designing for an established global education entity required absolute adherence to precise corporate illustration parameters:
Faceless Narrative Style: To ensure universal representation and maintain a strictly neutral, inclusive professional aesthetic, all character designs intentionally omit facial features. The human elements rely entirely on body language, posture, and environmental interaction to communicate the story.
Structured Corporate Environments: Scenic graphics—such as office settings and multi-layered city cross-sections—utilise clean, balanced vector layers to illustrate clear learning pathways and career milestones without creating visual distraction.
Strict Palette Control & Typography Rules
To achieve cross-platform visual consistency across Kaplan's digital ecosystem, the circle graphics were designed under a highly controlled color and typographic hierarchy:
The Circle Graphic Badges: Every asset is strictly built out of a designated tier system. The backdrop circles utilize the 'pastel', 'light', and 'complimentary' ranges (such as the soft pastel yellow and light purple hues), while the inner graphic elements sparingly pull from the high-contrast Core Colours for crisp accent highlights.
Typography Restrictions: In strict adherence to Kaplan’s branding guidelines, all integrated graphic textual elements explicitly utilize Open Sans Bold rendered exclusively in the signature Kaplan Purple (#240F6E).
The "Future of EdTech" Title Banners
To differentiate main section introductions from standard course content, custom title cards were generated. These assets introduce a dynamic gradient shift from deep royal blues to warm magenta, layered with digital halftone dot patterns and tech-inspired circuit lines to represent modern educational innovation.
Brand Colour Palette
The colour architecture separates content using light background tints while grounding interactive focal points with heavy core corporate swatches:
Kaplan Purple (#240F6E): The primary brand anchor, used exclusively for typography headers and structural line art boundaries.
Core Signal Blue (#005DE8): Applied as a high-visibility accent color to draw immediate visual attention to core learning metrics.
Pastel Range Accents: Soft background fills selected directly from the brand library—including Pastel Purple (#D3CBF1), Light Chartreuse (#CFF03C), and Muted Yellow (#F8DA62)—ensuring the graphic elements remain balanced, soft, and easy on the eyes.
Design Execution & Scalability
This visual strategy demonstrates how to successfully execute highly restricted brand parameters without compromising on creative storytelling. By relying on expressive silhouettes and meticulous environmental geometry instead of facial expressions, the system provides a universally relatable student experience.
The entire asset kit is mathematically balanced for scalability, meaning the circular badge vectors retain flawless line-weight consistency when scaled down to mobile screen sizes, while the detailed environmental banners remain exceptionally crisp when blown up onto large corporate presentation decks and desktop dashboards.