A note on Waterloo and a response to Brand New

I apologize to the people of Brand New for having to comment about this on my blog, but the way their site is structured, I can't really tell who this Armin person is who posted about the logo of my school (U of Waterloo) nor am I going to give in any sign in information to a site that has no about page. But I will give attribution to the link here so you can trackback.

If you hate the logo join the Facebook group.

I take offense in the general tone of the article but mostly at this particular part of the authors blog post:
"But somehow, a crest, like thousands of other crests — who the majority of people don’t know what they stand for anyway — does. Unfortunately this is antiquated thinking. Universities can not get by with traditional crests in today’s über branded environment and, if you look around, most large universities operate with a “marketing” logo and use a traditional seal for boring things like diplomas or the back covers of their catalogues"

1. Majority of people don't know what the crest stands for
- One of the benefits of having a crest, even among thousands, is that it is part of our visual vocabulary that denotes a University. While the new "W" logo is plain hideous (to which he also agrees) an non-crest is not automatically the answer.
- While Armin is certainly correct that "a majority of people" don't know Waterloo's crest. I would also guess that presenting a random internet sampling of people with a red crest with the word "VERITAS" on it wouldn't get instant recognition of Harvard University either.

2. Most large universities operate with a “marketing” logo and use a traditional seal
- I'm not sure where the author is claiming that most large universities operate with 2 sets of logos. In a quick scan, U of T, Queens, McGill, UBC do not use a separate logo.
- The exception I found was Western, but that has a specific use for the Western Mustangs, the sporting logo.
- It seems that American universities tend to do so in order to create a specific and separate brand around the sporting and alumni aspect of the university separate from the academics. At Waterloo (and in other Canadian universities), we do not support athletics in the same manner and really Waterloo's alumni efforts concentrate around how it is an excellent academic institution.
- If there is a comparison to Californian schools, like my own UC Berkeley, you have the Cal logo and the crest logo. Where it is also an excellent academic university, however, it is a University of California school, so all of the UCs (LA, Irvine, Berkeley, etc) all have the same crest, so a second logo is necessary for such differentiation.

3. Universities cannot get by with with a traditional crest in an über branded environment
- One of the thngs about brand is that it generally takes a while to be recognized. Waterloo is a fairly young university and probably does a better job with recognition compared to other instituions that are 50 years old.
- Waterloo has already invested over 20 years in the crest (wikipedia link) with the primary growth happening in recent times with graduates successes at RIM, OpenText, and various companies throughout the Silicon Valley.
- Brands take time and effort to cultivate. In the über branded marketing world, there's often millions of dollars that are put into launching or re-launching a new brand. Waterloo as a public university will unlikely have such an ability to put a new brand front and centre so it will try to rely on word of mouth to push this new logo. Which given the Facebook group and other conversations informally here in California, it will alienate the alumni.

If I could go back in time to talk to President Johnston, I would keep the word of mouth going and invest more time in alumni to promote the brand and the existing logo which most alums are accustomed to. All that time in committee could instead be put into really building the community and reputation of Waterloo rather than drawing up the next big "W".

[If you're coming here randomly, I have not worked in a branding focused agency. I'm a designer formerly in the advertising world and I've done branding at the Haas Graduate School of Business at UC Berkeley]