There was a flurry of excitement last week about the University of Western Ontario’s new visual identity, and deservedly so: it is by some distance the most visually radical re-brand for a Canadian university in many years.
Start with the good: getting rid of the tower was welcome and long overdue. The new graphics are a nice mix of old and new, retaining the palette, but significantly modernizing the overall look. They didn’t manage to unify the institutional and athletics logos, but that would have required a minor miracle, so let’s give them a pass on that.
That said, there’s much to puzzle about here. First and foremost, the crest’s subtitle: “Western. University. Canada.” This is apparently meant to reinforce the fact that it is a Canadian university for potential foreign students, few of whom recognize the word “Ontario.” Except that clarifying geographical positioning abroad actually makes the university look geographically inept domestically; to the casual glance, they seem to claiming to be a University in Western Canada, no doubt to the amusement of everyone in the Prairies and B.C.
In fact, the whole message that the re-brand is a way of improving the institution’s image internationally is just odd. It’s true Western’s name is a pretty fundamental problem in branding terms; “University of Western Ontario” aurally gets bracketed with places like Central Michigan or Eastern Kentucky, which makes the institution sounds far more local and provincial that it actually is. Arguably, this re-titling is about the best one could do with that particular problem.
But the idea that the name has been a barrier to attracting international students? Come on. I guarantee you that Indian and Chinese students are utterly clueless about the location of institutions like Regina, Sheridan or Centennial, but that hasn’t prevented any of them from comprehensively outperforming Western in terms of attracting international students over the last few years.
Western’s problem with international students is that they simply weren’t an institutional priority until about 24 months ago, and they’re playing catch-up. Top-notch admissions services, strong regional partnerships and a stellar academic profile are the top three ingredients for of attracting foreign students; a new visual identity and nomenclature is at best an extremely distant fourth.
A final puzzle: why a new visual identity, but no actual re-positioning of the institution? Though much of the press described this as a re-brand, it wasn’t, really. There’s no evidence that the new visual identity was an attempt to project a new brand personality or that it is attempting to shift people’s views of the institution itself (other than in a trivial geographic sense). I suspect that’s a missed opportunity.
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Not to be disrespectful, but I wouldn’t give the logo a high mark.
First of all, when you are going to embed images in a logo, you have to shrink them down to see if they can be seen when reduced (e.g. on a letterhead). In this case, as you will notice (or not notice), the images on the crest cannot be seen when they are reduced. The ‘crest images’ may be important to a small group at the university, but globally, who cares. ‘Book of knowledge’…’book’ is not a forward-thinking, innovative image to use (if you must, use a brain?). Using the ‘book’ reference/image, reminds me of, ‘Sam the RECORD man’?
As far as the colour, ‘deep purple’, if ‘wealth’ and ‘wisdom’, which are associated words used with the colour purple, are what they are projecting, then sure. Just be aware of the rise of tuition backlashes happening around the globe, and the public outcry that a higher education is becoming increasingly out of reach to many students and parents. Going back to the colour, I think Western’s ‘water resource engineers’ will like deep purple, since it is also associated with ‘smoke on the water’ (groan.)
I understand the ‘crowd sourcing’ concept and how it involves everyone to get hundreds of opinions. However, there are times and places to use this strategy. In this case, I’m sure that many of those surveyed are not educated ‘experts’ in advertising and graphic design (everybody’s a graphic designer?). Sure, you can get great ideas from ‘non-experts’ but get them after the professionals have done their prep work. Again, simplify. Show people 3 designs created by the ‘experts’ (that are being paid to design), and THEN get opinions. Too many options, too many variations, too much time, too much money spent.
In fact, just looking at the final design as I write this, I think they almost had it. Take a look at the maple leaf above the letter ‘t’ in the word ‘Western’. Why not bring that down and integrate that visual into the ‘t’. Rid of the crest altogether. Wouldn’t that imply, ‘Canada’? Then, rid of the word ‘Canada’, and replace it with est. 1878 (that will take care of the tradition aspect). Simplify?
By the way, the person that created the promo vides (Steven Anderson?), gets an A+ for that video! I hope he was asked for an opinion about the logo?
Just my opinion (4,99…6th).
*Just an fyi, I am a professor with a marketing background, and am not associated in any way with the university or the logo design process (I just read about it here). My personal opinion on Western, is that it is a highly-respected university, and I often read and hear great things about it. I think that is why I felt I needed to say something.