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- 2017-04-29 19:39:23
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It is a commonality among acclaimed universities to decide on frequent changes to the institutional insignia of its academia. The University of Oxford, the world’s oldest higher education institution, has revised its heraldic coat of arms ever since the beginning of the 15th century, making its last design amends in 1993. As per the Massachusetts Institute of Technoogy (MIT) website, the university has “gained currency” in welcoming more students in the last decade with its newest logo adopted in 2003. From a new brand mark and logotype to improving the brand concept with stylish fonts, saturated colors and fitting letterheads, the aim of introducing a new brand identity is twofold – to both re-position a university in the eyes of prospective students and to create market value in attracting corporate donors.
In the 25 years since its foundation, AUBG has stayed truthful to this strategy for re-branding, voting on a new university brand package three times – once in 1992, a second time in 2013, and a third time in the 2016-2017 academic year. The two more recent evaluations of proposals have concluded with a decision stalemate, after administrative disagreement in the first instance and community turmoil in the second have prevented their implementation.
[caption id="attachment_36337" align="aligncenter" width="805"] Proposed new brand image of AUBG; HA Design Studio[/caption]
Former President Kulinski has been one of the sound advocates for a new AUBG vision. Despite his efforts to persuade the Board of Trustees that a change of brand is needed, Kulinski came short of delivering results to his cause for a new logo and tagline.
“There is no decision until the Board makes a decision,” reaffirmed Elvin Guri, former Delegate to the Board of Trustees at the Feb. 8 Town Hall meeting.Asked in February for the stage of the university’s endorsing of a new brand identity, Kulinski acknowledged that it is “a question that I ask myself as well. We are on pause…It’s unclear as with many other things in AUBG. There is no policy manual or rulebook on these things.” According to Volume 4 of the 1993 edition of the first AUBG newspaper Aspecter, the then-Board of Trustees has delegated the responsibility of defining the first and still current AUBG logo to the Student Government and the two faculty co-chairs. [caption id="attachment_36333" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Student Government and the two faculty co-chairs were the ultimate decison-makers for the first AUBG logo; Aspecter, Vol.4, 1993[/caption]
“I don’t think the Board has ever voted on a logo,” confirmed the former president. “I don’t see it as a decision that warrants the attention of the full Board.”In December, Fall 2016 semester, Kulinski initiated a crowdsourcing for the new logo and received 249 submissions from both students and AUBG alumni. Nonetheless, all 249 layouts fell out of favor with both the president and the confidential design committee in reciprocal liking for another logo outlining the AUBG brand identity, taglined “Come here. Go anywhere.” The latter, created by Silicon Valley boutique firm HA Design Studio, was forwarded to student emails as a proposal. No representatives from the studio agreed to communicate with AUBG Daily about the alleged success-based no-payment pledge made by the firm to AUBG for the firm's eventual reimbursement of the proposed brand package. [caption id="attachment_36334" align="aligncenter" width="880"] Proposed new brand image of AUBG; HA Design Studio[/caption] “We will use your input into the final design process, as we introduce a new look for AUBG,” emailed Albena Kehayova, the Marketing and PR Lead specialist in AUBG, assuring the student body of its part-take in the decision-making for the new logo. Despite the continuous await for a vote of approval by the Board, former President Kulinski launched a small-scale premature re-branding with the selected logo proposal, through the distribution of promotional luncheon paper covers at the Dining Services canteen, pamphlets, referral program fliers and a change of the Facebook picture of the AUBG account. According to an internal survey sent out to faculty, staff, students and alumni, proposal evaluations resulted in a positive reaction from the first two constituencies and a split positive versus negative approval rate of the latter two communities on the aforementioned design. [caption id="attachment_36335" align="aligncenter" width="960"] One of the AUBG logo submissions[/caption]
“It was impossible to give everybody feedback in that large group of submissions,” defended himself Kulinski, after avoiding to compare his favoring of the HA Design Studio proposal at the expense of other submissions.[caption id="attachment_36336" align="aligncenter" width="1063"] One of the AUBG logo student submissions[/caption]
“All people gravitated towards the logo we asked input on,” said Kulinski. “We needed a logo that was conductive to being visible and legible in small and large formats, that was professionally designed and symmetrical. It met a lot of these criteria and it was the most comprehensive package. Producing not just the logo, but the design elements of the brand – the font for the text, colors, business cards, merchandise – all are quite expensive to be produced by a professional firm,” he affirmed.The new brand identity package also included the widely-debated tagline "Come Here. Go Anywhere", which appeared to be either similar or completely identical to the mottos and slogans of at least four other universities – University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Hawaii Community College, Indiana University Maurer School of Law and University of Aberdeen. [caption id="attachment_36348" align="aligncenter" width="960"] University of Aberdeen's 2016 recruitment slogan[/caption]
“We weren’t aware of this when the designers submitted the tagline,” commented Kulinski. “The one in Scotland [University of Aberdeen] seems to be a temporary recruiting campaign which has run out.” The Scottish university’s recruitment campaign has indeed used “Come Here. Go Anywhere” as a short-lived enrolment program slogan. University of Aberdeen’s actual motto is ‘The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom.’ Regarding another university’s slogan, the“Indiana Law School in no shape or form overlaps with our market. It’s as if we’re talking about cars and vegetables,” added the former president.[caption id="attachment_36349" align="aligncenter" width="1307"] "Come Here, Go Anywhere" as a tagline of Indiana University Maurer School of Law[/caption] Paper print-outs of the four educational institutions' taglines also appeared on the wooden board next to then-Professor Steven Sullivan's office. He declined to comment on his opinion on what appeared as his mocking of the tagline’s wording, in the days before his official appointment as an acting president of AUBG. At present, student inquiries of the progress in adopting a new AUBG insignia continue to be dodged by the Board of Trustees representatives. The clouds of uncertainty are set to remain until the first weeks of classes in the Fall 17 semester, due to the continuation of the university’s restructuring which will restart in the summer months, according to Sullivan. Until then, the question of whether the 25-year blue-and-white AUBG logo would last longer than the span of the next four months would continue to be a progressively more burdensome riddle to solve. Additional Logo Submissions: