The New UC Logo: Let There Be Haters

Because I have no training or experience as a graphic designer, I prefer not to write about visual identities, aka logos, unless there’s a language angle I can cover. That’s why I’ve avoided any comment on the new University of California logo, even though (a) I’m an alumna myself (Berkeley campus) and (b) it is, as you can readily see, a pretty dramatic development.

Old and new logos via Berkeleyside.

But in the weeks since I first learned about the logo redesign, the story has become too huge to ignore. (Even James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, has weighed in.) And when I realized there was a tiny language angle after all, I decided to add my two cents.

First, some clarification from the university about how the new logo was developed and how it’s being implemented:

The University of California seal isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to grace diplomas and other official UC documents, just as it has for most of the university's long and storied history.

Jason Simon, marketing communications director at UC’s Office of the President, issued that reassurance as debate continued over a small monogram that appears on many of the university's systemwide Web pages, as well as its marketing and communication materials.

“The seal signifies the prestige and tradition of the university itself, and is a treasured part of the UC identity,” Simon said. “There has never been any plan to replace it with the monogram.”

Reassuring, right? Not so fast.

I learned about the new logo in a November 20 post on the influential design blog Brand New. The monogram, wrote Armin Vit, is for the entire UC system rather than any of the university’s 10 campuses; it’s intended for use on the Internet and mobile devices as well as on print materials and assorted tchotchkes (mugs, tote bags, pins). It was developed by an in-house team and quietly introduced in November. “[T]his is less of a rebranding exercise, but instead the creation of a coherent, consistent, and relevant brand identity where before there was none,” said the creative director, Vanessa Kanan Correa.

Vit praised the monogram-style logo – “really simple and memorable” – and the video that introduces it. “Overall, this is a really great redesign that gives UC its own personality,” he concluded. Vit is a designer.

Co.Design, Fast Company’s design blog, also approved. The headline on Kelsey Campbell-Dolaghan’s story singled out the logo’s “surfer charm.” Campbell-Dolaghan is a designer.

Non-designers have been, shall we say, less impressed. Indeed, from the public uproar you’d think the Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy had been prematurely fulfilled.

Some comments on a Berkeleyside story about the logo:

“Totally meaningless.” “The disappearing C is grotesquely ugly.” “A turd circling the bowl. Money down the drain.” “Everyone involved with this travesty of a design should be fired.”

On a Los Angeles Times story:

“Is today’s date April 1st? This must be some kind of joke.” “

On an Inside Higher Ed story:

“Quite honestly it seems more like a subversive marketing campaign against books.”

On an Oakland Tribune story:

“Did Stanford design this?” [Stanford and Berkeley are sports rivals.]

And on one of many anti-logo Facebook pages, this comment from Amy Einsohn, whose Copyeditor’s Handbook was published by the University of California Press:

The shape that is supposed to represent the “U” looks like a garbage bag, a low-flush toilet, a beaker with a chipped lip, three-fourths of a flip-flop—you get my drift. And the font for the “C” is a most juvenile example of a modern sans serif typeface—suitable for a preschool or kindergarten perhaps.

There’s also a “Stop the UC logo” petition on Change.org with more than 50,000 signatures.

The outcry has been so noisy that Armin Vit posted a follow-up to his original critique, in which he wrote, in part:  “I wish I had the time to devote the rest of this week to write a response to each and every single supporter who has left a comment in the Change.org petition, because each one is more asinine than the next.” I recommend reading his entire post to better understand his perspective, and that of many other designers, on the controversy.

As for me – not a designer, remember, just someone with a couple of degrees from UC Berkeley – why, I can play Mock The Logo too. What do I see? Hmm. It’s a eulogy: California is sinking – as the oceans rise, perhaps – and also gradually decaying. We’re putting on a cheerful face, though, as our sunny (Swedish?) colors indicate.

(By the way, Weight Watchers’ new logo also employs that odd waning effect. In this case it seems to suggest that you won’t just drop a few pounds – you’ll actually fade away to nothingness.)

Old and new logos via Brand New.

And then there’s that tiny language angle I promised all those paragraphs ago: What happened to the motto? In the video, it’s brushed aside rather peremptorily and replaced by some streaky lines. Is this a suitable fate for “Let There Be Light”? (See my 2011 post about university mottos.)

And while I’m at it: On a semantic level, shouldn’t the U be inside the C? Yes, it would be a tight squeeze, but we’re all cutting back these days.

But honestly? I’m not offended by the new logo. It’s energetic, it’s distinctive, and – above all – it’s marketing. Because, let’s face it: marketing is what higher education is all about. (That and “development,” the chaste synonym for “extracting money from alumni.”) Besides, the teeth-gnashing and clothes-rending that have accompanied the logo’s big reveal strike me as knee-jerk and a little suspicious. Armin Vit feels that way, too. He writes: “I have never seen so many people so passionate about a seal. A seal that looks exactly like a hundred other university seals.”

I know from experience that rebranding is a hard, mostly thankless job. People, even supposedly liberal people in California, tend to resist change and cling to the familiar. Designers, on the other hand, get no credit for logos that were created before they were born. Inside the design bubble, the battle cry is almost always Out with the old! In with the new!

But as we’re seeing now, and as we’ve seen with the recent Tropicana and Gap redesign fiascos, the world outside the design bubble can be swift and harsh in its judgment. Tropicana and Gap yielded to the negative public pressure, but I’m hoping UC stands firm. It’s just a new logo, after all; it’s not as though all those degrees and libraries and Nobel Prizes (and football games and fraternity parties and fondly remembered all-nighters) have suddenly ceased to be.

Armin Vit concludes his update with this fine rant, which I second:

To be perfectly honest, I don’t care if this logo withers and dies or if it survives and prospers. … What I do care about, deeply, is the danger this mob mentality poses to the practice of logo and identity design, which is, no way, a democratic process: People in leadership positions make these decisions; it’s their responsibility to get buy-in from whatever number of people they feel is required to push their decision forward — sometimes it’s five people, sometimes it’s endless focus groups. But the process and the final decision is between client and designer. Not between mob and online petitions.

That’s why, by the way, I stand firmly and loudly against the practice of crowdsourcing or focus-grouping the verbal identity, too – the names, the taglines, the copy. If you, the client, don’t trust the professionals you’re paying to do the job, you probably shouldn’t trust a bunch of amateurs.

UPDATE: San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll is less forgiving than I:

We “reach out” with this new logo and touch your heart, or your brain, or whatever part of you is touched by logos. We stroke your hair and say, “There, there.” Our vanishing C will make you feel good inside. You'll think, “I must give to this institution so it can continue to make me feel good with its powerful logo.”

Ah yes – let’s not forget that reach out has its haters, too.

UPDATE #2, December 14: UC “suspends” its new logo. Rod Dreher writes in The American Conservative that one of the in-house designers has received death threats.

Comments

[Steve Hall]

Meh. I'm not excited about Cal's new logo, but I do have a problem with something created in Berkeley for Berkeley, is being touted as the UC System's new logo: There's nothing wrong with the script UCLA for my alma mater, for example (Psychology '74).

As a symbol of the University of California itself, it's fine. It's easily recognized (which can be good or bad, depending on one's viewpoint, of course). But like you, I'm a bit disheartened by the absence of the university's motto.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Steve: If by Cal you mean the generally accepted nickname for the UC Berkeley campus, this is not "Cal's new logo." It's a logo for the entire UC system, which operates as an entity separate from the individual campuses (and which happens to be headquartered in the city of Berkeley). [CORRECTION: In the city of Oakland.]

Thus UCLA will keep its wordmark, and all of the other campus will keep their individual logos. That point keeps getting overlooked in the discussions.

[Mudge]

A UC grad myself, I'll use that as entitlement for my own comments:

The "C" has a "still loading" look about it, suggesting this: http://kitchenmudge.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/cainloading.gif

In general, the "U" is almost undiscernable, and it's just a patch of nothing that says nothing.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Mudge: Yes, many people have mentioned "still loading." You can read lots of things into the logo, but if the marketing is done well, your interpretation will be overridden.

This is a bigger issue than one university's logo: it's about professionals vs. amateurs and why the vogue for "socializing" all creative choices is bad news.

[Amy Einsohn]

“Surfer charm” might suit four of the UC campuses (San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles), but it seems offkey for some others (Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside).

Also, UC Systemwide (UC Office of the President) is headquartered in Oakland, not Berkeley; http://www.ucop.edu/locations-maps/index.html

[tanita]

I've been snickering about this quietly for days; one of my best friends is a UCB alum, and BOY, don't get her started. *shrug* I went to Mills...

I kind of think the top of the U is supposed to look like an open book. I like the idea of the C as a "still loading" symbol; most of us, at school, whatever our age, are in a process... eventually the information will load. Or, at least that's the idea.

It's not a classical looking symbol, no. But I'm not sure that changes the occupation of the university, or its students. The only thing I'm prepared to get vituperative about with reference to the UC system? Are the fees.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Amy: "Surfer charm" is how Co.Design interprets the logo. I haven't seen the design brief used by the creative team, so I can't say whether "surfer charm" was among the design objectives. For all I know, it was.

And that's my point: We members of the public don't have the advantage of knowing the guidelines within which the designers worked, so it's unfair to them to make judgments based on our subjective and uninformed biases.

Thanks for the correction re: Oakland. I've made the change in the comment.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Tanita: If you watch the video embedded in the Brand New post (http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/ic_uc_we_all_c_for_california.php), you'll see how the shape of the new logo evolved from the book in the old logo.

[Chris]

Armin Vit: "each one is more asinine than the next"
... so he is saying that the comments are getting progressively less asinine? I suspect that was not his intention.

[Stacey Kimmel]

I was at NC State when their new logo was announced and panned (see http://www.cvm.ncsu.edu/emd/cvm_logos/NCSU%20LOGO.jpg), not so much for the logo itself but for the cost which was by my recollection over 30K to develop by an outside firm -- and the fact that it looks so plain. I'm not a graphic designer -- it looks serviceable to me, but the price tag is surprising...

[Nancy Friedman]

@Stacey: The result may look "plain," but I can assure you the process involved dozens of decisions: Should we use an off-the-shelf typeface or create a custom font? What weight should we give the letters? And so on.

Also: We members of the public don't know what the other choices were. The designers may have created and presented some exciting, unusual identities that were rejected by a more traditionally minded board.

[Julia7]

Just want to go on record as really liking the new UC logo. I find it elegant, clean, fun and strong (all at the same time), and I like the colors. The "issues" that people are raising aren't relevant, IMHO. I also like that it was created by an in-house design team. I hope they keep it.