INTL. REVIEW BY KATRINA POSTED BY Brand New

One Element too Many?

[Ed.’s Note: This redesign is from early 2009, so I realize I am breaking one of our rules, but I thought this was a very intriguing solution that deserves discussion. — Armin]

Aarhus University (AU), established in 1928, is Denmark’s second largest educational institution and ranked in the top 100 universities worldwide. AU is a lively, modern university, which collaborates with the business community, cultural centres and other universities throughout the world. At the end of 2008, AU underwent a visual identity change in response to a consolidation of the Danish higher education system and to strengthen the University’s international competitiveness, shifting the visual identifier of the University from the traditional seal to a more modern logo as well as updating the design of all paper and web materials and creating a new typographic element.

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DATE: Mar.16.2010CATEGORY: Education 54 COMMENTS

INTL. REVIEW BY Paul Vickers POSTED BY Brand New

The Radiance of Knowledge?

The Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris3 (University of the New Sorbonne Paris3) is one of the premier liberal arts and humanities universities in France, it is located in the literary, intellectual heart of Paris in St. Germain des Prés. Established in 1971, it is one of six universities — it being the third, hence the Paris3 designation — of the famed University of Paris whose origins date back to 1253. The domed 17th century central administration building is a familiar landmark on the Paris skyline and draws almost 20,000 students and academics from around the world to work and study in France. The old logo, created in the early 1970s as a repositioning statement following the May 1968 student protests, has all the characteristics of a ’70s mediocre design, with an incomprehensible combination of an acronym, crayoned go-faster stripes and a pyramid — and when it comes to Parisian pyramids we all first think of I.M. Pei’s Pyramide du Louvre. Was there anything else you could add? To anyone outside of the French academic world the name P3 meant absolutely nothing, legibility of both the acronym and the type below was extremely poor to the point where, on the current university web site the name has to be spelled out again in a larger type size and different typeface to compensate for the lack of legibility. So, a redesign has been in order for a long time.

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DATE: Jan.18.2010CATEGORY: Education 37 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

Architectural Identity for Applied Sciences University

Starting with the 2009/2010 school year, the Northern Hogeschool Leeuwarden in The Netherlands — a 10,000-student, medium-sized university specializing in applied sciences — will be known as NHL University, and will soon be occupying a new, fancy and diagonally-inclined building designed by Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger. For the university’s new era, Amsterdam based koeweiden postma designed a new identity inspired by the building.

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DATE: Nov.09.2009CATEGORY: Education 41 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

A Tree Grows in Sweden

On January of 2010 classes will begin at Linnaeus University (Linnéuniversitetet in Swedish) for the first time as the result of a merger between Växjö University and Kalmar College, giving Linnaeus two campuses in the two cities of its predecessors, Växjö and Kalmar, Sweden. The uiversity has been named after Carl Linnaeus, an eighteenth century naturalist and physician, who is widely credited as the father of modern taxonomy (and apparently, the inventor of the index card). The new identity has been designed by (one of my favorite design firms) Stockholm Design Lab.

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DATE: Oct.23.2009CATEGORY: Education 33 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

A Scientific Identity

Located in Enschede, Netherlands Universiteit Twente (UT) is a world renown educational institution with a focus on subjects that would make your head explode like behavioral sciences, engineering technology, computer science and nanotechnology among many other areas offering bachelor and graduate degrees as well as PhDs. As part of a €2.2-million expense, UT has redesigned its identity and exchanged its old tagline, “the entrepreneurial university,” for a period. Courtesy of Studio Dumbar.

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DATE: Sep.30.2009CATEGORY: Education 37 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

Will Waterloo Logo Survive?

I’ve said it before and I’ll unfortunately have to say it again: Designing identities for higher education institutions is the most perilous realm of identity design and not too different from stepping right up front during Pamplona’s running of the bulls. The latest fiasco comes courtesy of the student body of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, a well regarded and large university.

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DATE: Jul.24.2009CATEGORY: Education 53 COMMENTS

BY Armin

Punctuation University

In January of 2010, Aalto University — the resulting institution of the merger of the Helsinki School of Economics, the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology — in Helsinki, Finland will begin its first day of school. For those interested, a handy PDF explains everything in detail about this new institution. While everything about this school indicates a forward-looking vision, they decided to hold a backwards-acting contest to determine its visual identity. Open to students, staff and alumni of Aalto University, the contest was open from March to April and a few weeks ago the winner was announced.

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DATE: Jun.01.2009CATEGORY: Education 69 COMMENTS

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.

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DATE: Mar.26.2009CATEGORY: Education 56 COMMENTS

BY Armin

Comments: The Day After

Not to dwell much longer on the subject, but just to bring some conclusions so that we can move on with our regularly scheduled posts. I have never considered our blogs to be one-way discussions where what we say is the last word, so I want to thank everyone that shared their opinion, and they are all taken into account.

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DATE: Mar.10.2009CATEGORY: Education 52 COMMENTS

BY Armin

Cracking Down on Comment Crime

I was hoping that I would never have to write this post for Brand New, but the growing flurry of offensive and useless comments in the past few months makes it necessary. Brand New has grown into one of the most popular blogs about identity design and many, many people in the industry around the world — from interns, to creative directors, to principals — turn to us for the latest work. To their (and my own) dismay everyone is consistently disappointed by the ensuing commentary, and while some may actually enjoy the car-wreck aspect of it, it has become, in some instances, too bile and hurtful. This is unacceptable.

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DATE: Mar.09.2009CATEGORY: Education 195 COMMENTS