The Marketing and Future Students team at NIC has won an award for its graphic design work.
The Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) awarded NIC an In-House Design Award of Merit for the creation of the college’s brand ecosystem. This includes NIC’s current brand guide, icon libraries, editorial guides, templates and other resources.
“We're deeply honoured by this recognition from the RGD,” said Erin Kenny, Associate Director, Marketing & Future Students. “It speaks to the creativity and talent of the Marketing and Future Students team, and to the many people across NIC who bring our brand to life every single day."
Graphic designer Marissa Johnson accepted the NIC award during a ceremony at the DesignThinkers Conference in Vancouver on Wednesday, May 27.
“I am so proud of the NIC brand ecosystem, and I've loved seeing the NIC community embrace it over the past two years,” she said. “Now, it feels great to have this work recognized among so many impressive examples of design from teams across Canada and the U.S.”
The RGD received over 250 entries for the 2026 awards. There were 54 winning projects: 11 Awards of Distinction and 46 Awards of Merit. The former are selected by the judges as their individual top picks, while the Awards of Merit are projects that received the highest scores from the judges who reviewed them.
The NIC submission notes it rolled out this brand identity publicly with a new, accessible website in 2025, resulting in an increased website engagement rate of 65 per cent and a notable increase in domestic applications.
The winners were in sectors such as post-secondary education, health care, arts and culture, financial services and retail. The panel of 12 judges was comprised of in-house leaders from companies such as CBC/Radio-Canada, EY and Bruce Power.
DesignThinkers is regarded as Canada’s largest annual graphic design conference to celebrate creativity, innovation and the power of design.