Opinion BY Christian Palino

Roosevelt University Turns a Corner

Roosevelt University is a university based in Chicago and Schaumburg, Illinois that has grown to offer 126 degree programs since its creation in 1945. The university gave itself a major visual brand overhaul this year as they hired Chicago-based design studio Studio Blue to create a new primary logo system, university seal and sports logo and released them in parallel with the launch of their new website, designed by mStoner.

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Opinion BY Armin

Crystal Ball Says What?

Around the world, the adage applies that all roads lead to Rome, but in the state of New York, all roads lead to a SUNY (State University of New York) campus. With over 460,000 enrolled students across 64 campuses, SUNY is the biggest conglomerate of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, if not the world. Keeping the organization unified and focused must be a massive effort and sometimes it requires bold and far-reaching initiatives to keep things moving, so this month SUNY presented “The Power of SUNY,” a strategic plan for 2010 and beyond that establishes the scope of what SUNY wants to achieve. Along with it, came a new logo.

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Opinion BY Armin

Follow-Up: University of Waterloo

In July of 2009 we reported on the University of Waterloo’s attempt at a redesign, which went awry after banners with a new look went up and a leaked logo made the rounds, riling up students, faculty and alumni alike. The opposing Facebook group, Students and Alumni Against the New University of Waterloo Logo, that at the time had 5,530 grew to accommodate 8,287. Little more than a month later, a new Facebook group from the university itself appeared: University of Waterloo Marketing Logo Feedback. To this day, the latter only has 86 fans. Guess which group won?

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Opinion BY Armin

An Academic Fingerprint

Named after Major General Sir Isaac Brock, who died defending Niagara from the American invasion at Queenston Heights in 1812, Brock University was established in 1964 in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada and now hosts over 17,000 students. Through all these years, I believe, an effigy of Sir Isaac Brock has served as the university’s logo, along with some brutishly old serif typeface. Last year Brock went through a much needed redesign, created by Canadian firm Target Marketing & Communication, based on the research generated by Colorado-based Educational Marketing Group who conducted “town hall meetings and focus groups and one-on-one interviews with almost 700 faculty, staff and alumni.”

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Opinion BY Armin

To Maple or Not to Maple

Established in 1910, as the new logo clearly indicates, Mount Royal University began as Mount Royal College up until 2009 when the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada granted it the designation of University, becoming only the fourth university in Calgary (and the 98th in Canada) — and if I understand this correctly, in Canada this means that as a University, Mount Royal can offer degrees as opposed to only diplomas and certificates. While the new name alone warranted an identity change, the old logo was in the most dire need of an update. With a process that started in March of 2009, a new identity designed by Cundari was unveiled this past February.

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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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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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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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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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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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