Digital Credentials
A digital credentials system that allows students to display their achievements electronically.
Role: Graphic designer
Client: Health Leadership & Learning Network, York University
Skills: Sketching, graphic design
Tools: Adobe InDesign
Context & role
The Health Leadership and Learning Network (HLLN) at York University provides continuing education for health professionals through their workshops and industry certificate programs. Their programs are evidence-based and industry-informed to support professional development and life-long learning.
As a Program Assistant, I took on various roles including graphic design. When our team started discussing digital credentials and badging, I was excited to be a part of an emerging form of skills currency that would allow successful HLLN students to display their achievements electronically.
HLLN digital credentials are stackable - students can earn them over time as part of a sequence of credentials towards a professional certificate representing a milestone achievement.
Honeycombs: The first design
I started designing by playing with different badge shapes that would visually represent a “stack”.
My first iteration used hexagons to mimic the prismatic structures of honeycombs. The idea was for the professional certificate to be supported by a honeycomb of preceding skills and knowledge that would build up to the milestone achievement.
The colours chosen here were for experimentation - no colour system had been put into place yet to distinguish between the levels of credentials. However, I knew that certificate credentials had to stand out from knowledge and skill credentials and that I wanted to use colour to help make the distinction.
With this honeycomb system, I decided to differentiate certificates by designing them with a solid white background, a red border, and the word ‘Certification’ in York’s official red colour while the other credentials had a different background colour, as shown in the image with blue, red, and green backgrounds taking up the top two-thirds of each credential hexagon.
The fonts are part of York’s branding guide with Interstate as the title font and Dax as the subtitle font.
Although the design could carry the metaphor of a “stack” and had a quality of playfulness to it, the HLLN team and I found that it lacked the minimalism and professionalism of other digital credentials used in various industries. So I started thinking about using other shapes and, for more versatility, decided to discontinue the visual metaphor.
Tried and true: Circles
Next, I worked with another shape tried and true to represent badges: circles.
With this iteration, the design was closer to what we wanted but I felt that it still needed a visual way to distinguish between skills and professional certificates and to minimize text.
The final design
After looking around at what other institutions were doing for their badges, I chose a circular shape with a top-left corner. This corner gave me room for icons to distinguish between skills (gear icons) and professional certificates (certificate ribbon icons).
To differentiate between the levels of credentials, I chose three main colours reflective of York University’s branding. The York red is used across all Fundamental Skills (the most common level earned), grey, which appears in the HLLN logo, is used for Advanced Skills, and a gold from York’s secondary colours palette represents milestone achievements – Professional Certificates.
The logos of the Faculty of Health and HLLN are easily identifiable at the top of each badge. Level labels are placed in the bottom third of every badge within a banner across the width of the circle. The title of each credential (e.g. Patient Needs Assessment, Care Coordination, etc.) is displayed above the level banners in all caps bold font in the centre of the badge. Professional Certificate titles are displayed in a larger font than the titles in skills badges to emphasize their grandeur. Typography is based on York University’s official font, Interstate.
