BY Armin

A Tower Sheds its Stripes

Identity work for educational institutions — specially large universities — is one of the most superficially scrutinized and hardest to amicably propagate among the student body, faculty and alumni. Most people build extremely tight bonds with their institution and any change to what they remember or grew to love is always cause for dissent and, strangely enough, identity changes ignite some of the most fervent ire. The biggest complaints are always the cost, regardless of whether it’s a four, five or six figure budget and the claim that it could have easily been done in-house or by the students of the design program. Recently released, the University of Arkansas tried to quell both issues in the design of its identity by asking its office of university relations to lead the redesign in-house and letting their audience know that they would not be willing to pay top dollar for the change.

Chancellor G. David Gearhart asked university relations to manage the design change in-house, noting that estimates from outside firms ran as high as $200,000 with no guarantee that the campus community’s opinions would be fully considered.
— Press Release

The new design maintains the cornerstone of the logo, the north tower of the Old Main building (built in 1875), except that instead of trying to pull off an IBM stripe design it goes for a competent simplification. The tower is set against a crest which comes from the seal of the university and it is fronted by a ribbon with the date of establishment. The typography is the ever popular Trajan, which is as common in movie posters as it is in logos for educational institutions. And it is particularly funny when you compare it against the University of Kansas logo, which uses the same type treatment, minus the beginning “AR.”

The overall result is a definite improvement in readability and functionality and even though complaints are starting to file in, the redesign was much needed and whether or not $200,000 would have yielded a better result… we will never know.

Thanks to Jon Schleuss for the tip.

\n\nIdentity work for educational institutions — specially large universities — is one of the most superficially scrutinized and hardest to amicably propagate among the student body, faculty and alumni. Most people build extremely tight bonds with their institution and any change to what they remember or grew to love is always cause for dissent and, strangely enough, identity changes ignite some of the most fervent ire. The biggest complaints are always the cost, regardless of whether it's a four, five or six figure budget and the claim that it could have easily been done in-house or by the students of the design program. Recently released, the University of Arkansas tried to quell both issues in the design of its identity by asking its office of university relations to lead the redesign in-house and letting their audience know that they would not be willing to pay top dollar for the change.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners