U-S-C......GO Branding
- Thread starter BlackMagik
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I know all y'all are gonna do is complain some more, but here's part of an article where someone in Communications explains the new logo and such. Just as I said last page, the new logo isn't a wholesale change and is mostly meant to be used online and in spaces where you need a simple, small logo. Definitely something to freak out over!
The university has made some changes recently in terms of its look. Can you explain what has changed and what hasn’t?
The visual identity is just part of a much larger brand refresh. It had been a little over eight years since we had taken a look at the brand platform and asked ourselves if this needed to be updated. We did some pretty extensive research — both qualitative and quantitative, with just over 8,000 people, including leadership, faculty, students, prospective students, etc. — and it was clear that we needed to refresh some things. What has been seen so far is just one small part of that, part of the visual identity system that will be used on social media and on other communications applications where space is limited. People will start to see the new platform over the course of the next semester as we put it into production.
We initially put out the UofSC on social media, and there was a little bit of confusion out there about what that was. Can you walk through the different visual elements — what’s new, what has been refreshed and what has stayed the same?
An updated and more flexible visual identity system is one part of the new brand platform.
The athletics marks will not be altered as part of this — they will remain the same. We revised the tree and gates logo; it is the second time that logo has been revised since it was introduced in 1996. It was originally introduced when the web was in its early days and prior to the advent of social media. So digital applications weren’t really a consideration in its design. As a result, it didn’t really hold up well in smaller formats, and especially in digital formats like avatars. So, we simplified that and made it a little cleaner.
It’s still a pretty complex visual mark, so we wanted something that complemented that in small spaces. That’s why we created the UofSC monograms. There is one that is stacked and one that is linear. Those will be used for promotional items, for digital applications, for lapel pins and other areas where space is limited.
Then there is a mark that sort of combines those two things — it pairs the South Carolina wordmark from the tree and gates logo with the monogram to give us a visual element plus “South Carolina.”
Other Southeastern Conference schools refer to us as South Carolina. There are a lot of universities nationally where, when you hear the state name — which is the flagship university's name, as well — you think university first and state second, and that’s kind of the idea here. We are proud of South Carolina, and we really want to take what is already a strong tie between the state and the university — and has been for more than 200 years — and make that a point of emphasis and a point of pride.
I think a lot of attention the monogram got was because it was first out of the gate; it really is just an abbreviation that goes back to that focus on South Carolina.
Part of that was the way it was rolled out. The entire brand platform was presented to stakeholders on campus, everyone from our steering committee to the Board of Trustees to the deans and others, and then to communicators across campus. At some point, you reach critical mass where it crosses from internal to external. In this age of social media, you as the organization behind the branding don’t have control over how it’s shared. For instance, we presented on a screen at the Moore School that is 30 feet high, and we saw in real time that the third slide of the presentation had been photographed and tweeted out. At that point things became external.
We really aren’t trying to create a new brand for the university; what we are trying to do is have the brand reflect who the university is today.
J.C. Huggins, director of brand strategy
Can you talk about some of the research and discovery that went into this?
We did quite a bit of research, both brand perception research — testing some of the concepts that were part of the platform previously — and national identity research.
In the national identity research, we tested things like USC, Carolina and UofSC nationally. Nationally, and that includes South Carolina, the abbreviation “USC” was associated with the University of Southern California 70 percent of the time and with us about 20 percent of the time. “UofSC” was associated with the University of South Carolina 71 percent of the time and with Southern Cal about 20 percent of the time.
The findings were interesting to us. We have used “UofSC” in social media for 10 years, and we have used it around campus for things like TEDxUofSC, a “@UofSC” section on the website since 2013 and the daily email @uofsc Today. But we really haven’t used it in other marketing materials in a big way, so to have that kind of association at those levels is pretty remarkable.
And those themes are reflected in the brand platform and things that the public has not really seen.
That’s right. It’s everything from key messages to the visual identity. It’s the ways that we express who we are.
One way to think of it is as a personification of the university. If you thought about the university as a person, what would that personality be? These are things you will see in the voice and the personality of the things we create in communications, as well as the visual identity.
When most people think of a brand, they think of a logo and a tagline. But really, that is a small part of it. The brand messages focus, as we have for the past several years, on academic and research excellence, the outstanding student experience here at the university, and the fact that the university is both the economic and the social engine for the state, because we educate so many South Carolinians.
The idea is that it is an evolution of the way we have talked about those themes in the past. We are still talking about those same themes, but we are talking about them in a new way where everything fits together in a more holistic sense.
We really aren’t trying to create a new brand for the university; what we are trying to do is have the brand reflect who the university is today.
Overall, what do you hope the brand refresh can do for the university and for its reputation?
I hope it is the foundation for enhancing our national reputation and for a sense of pride. I hope it gives people an idea of how they can best refer to and embody the best of the university, so that our external audiences get a clear and consistent idea of what it is that makes this place great and all the fantastic things that happen here on a daily basis.
A brand is not something that we are defining as much as it is defined by our external audiences — it’s a perception of us that people have in their minds. While we want to shape that, we also have to have brand awareness and understand what that perception is to start with.
J.C. Huggins, director of brand strategy
The visual identity is just part of a much larger brand refresh. It had been a little over eight years since we had taken a look at the brand platform and asked ourselves if this needed to be updated. We did some pretty extensive research — both qualitative and quantitative, with just over 8,000 people, including leadership, faculty, students, prospective students, etc. — and it was clear that we needed to refresh some things. What has been seen so far is just one small part of that, part of the visual identity system that will be used on social media and on other communications applications where space is limited. People will start to see the new platform over the course of the next semester as we put it into production.
We initially put out the UofSC on social media, and there was a little bit of confusion out there about what that was. Can you walk through the different visual elements — what’s new, what has been refreshed and what has stayed the same?
An updated and more flexible visual identity system is one part of the new brand platform.
The athletics marks will not be altered as part of this — they will remain the same. We revised the tree and gates logo; it is the second time that logo has been revised since it was introduced in 1996. It was originally introduced when the web was in its early days and prior to the advent of social media. So digital applications weren’t really a consideration in its design. As a result, it didn’t really hold up well in smaller formats, and especially in digital formats like avatars. So, we simplified that and made it a little cleaner.
It’s still a pretty complex visual mark, so we wanted something that complemented that in small spaces. That’s why we created the UofSC monograms. There is one that is stacked and one that is linear. Those will be used for promotional items, for digital applications, for lapel pins and other areas where space is limited.
Then there is a mark that sort of combines those two things — it pairs the South Carolina wordmark from the tree and gates logo with the monogram to give us a visual element plus “South Carolina.”
Other Southeastern Conference schools refer to us as South Carolina. There are a lot of universities nationally where, when you hear the state name — which is the flagship university's name, as well — you think university first and state second, and that’s kind of the idea here. We are proud of South Carolina, and we really want to take what is already a strong tie between the state and the university — and has been for more than 200 years — and make that a point of emphasis and a point of pride.
I think a lot of attention the monogram got was because it was first out of the gate; it really is just an abbreviation that goes back to that focus on South Carolina.
Part of that was the way it was rolled out. The entire brand platform was presented to stakeholders on campus, everyone from our steering committee to the Board of Trustees to the deans and others, and then to communicators across campus. At some point, you reach critical mass where it crosses from internal to external. In this age of social media, you as the organization behind the branding don’t have control over how it’s shared. For instance, we presented on a screen at the Moore School that is 30 feet high, and we saw in real time that the third slide of the presentation had been photographed and tweeted out. At that point things became external.
We really aren’t trying to create a new brand for the university; what we are trying to do is have the brand reflect who the university is today.
J.C. Huggins, director of brand strategy
Can you talk about some of the research and discovery that went into this?
We did quite a bit of research, both brand perception research — testing some of the concepts that were part of the platform previously — and national identity research.
In the national identity research, we tested things like USC, Carolina and UofSC nationally. Nationally, and that includes South Carolina, the abbreviation “USC” was associated with the University of Southern California 70 percent of the time and with us about 20 percent of the time. “UofSC” was associated with the University of South Carolina 71 percent of the time and with Southern Cal about 20 percent of the time.
The findings were interesting to us. We have used “UofSC” in social media for 10 years, and we have used it around campus for things like TEDxUofSC, a “@UofSC” section on the website since 2013 and the daily email @uofsc Today. But we really haven’t used it in other marketing materials in a big way, so to have that kind of association at those levels is pretty remarkable.
And those themes are reflected in the brand platform and things that the public has not really seen.
That’s right. It’s everything from key messages to the visual identity. It’s the ways that we express who we are.
One way to think of it is as a personification of the university. If you thought about the university as a person, what would that personality be? These are things you will see in the voice and the personality of the things we create in communications, as well as the visual identity.
When most people think of a brand, they think of a logo and a tagline. But really, that is a small part of it. The brand messages focus, as we have for the past several years, on academic and research excellence, the outstanding student experience here at the university, and the fact that the university is both the economic and the social engine for the state, because we educate so many South Carolinians.
The idea is that it is an evolution of the way we have talked about those themes in the past. We are still talking about those same themes, but we are talking about them in a new way where everything fits together in a more holistic sense.
We really aren’t trying to create a new brand for the university; what we are trying to do is have the brand reflect who the university is today.
Overall, what do you hope the brand refresh can do for the university and for its reputation?
I hope it is the foundation for enhancing our national reputation and for a sense of pride. I hope it gives people an idea of how they can best refer to and embody the best of the university, so that our external audiences get a clear and consistent idea of what it is that makes this place great and all the fantastic things that happen here on a daily basis.
A brand is not something that we are defining as much as it is defined by our external audiences — it’s a perception of us that people have in their minds. While we want to shape that, we also have to have brand awareness and understand what that perception is to start with.
J.C. Huggins, director of brand strategy
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