Last winter break, I was reading an article about the UC logo redesign (left-old, right-new). There's some controversy as to the necessity of a new design and its intended purpose. The new logo was designed by UCs graphic design team and was to show up on their website and other documents but the original seal would be used on legal certificates. This didn't sit to well with UC students and alumni apparently as they were concerned it didn't accurately represent their school.
Not going to the school I couldn't really say how effective it is in such things but as a designer my only problem with it is that its just not very well designed. I can see potential with it in interactive media like a website though if it just used the golden "c" with some calligraphic logotype. As it stands, it is pretty ugly in my opinion. What do you think?
While I personally agree with you that the new logo was ugly, the whole marketing and presenting the logo to the public was an epic failure on UC's graphic design team.
ReplyDeleteAIGA has an interesting take on the UC logo and posted an interesting article if anyone is interested - http://www.aiga.org/the-uc-logo-controversy/
While they disagree with popular opinion of the logo they do mention one important fact is that as designers we should not publicly criticize the work of other graphic designers since it is completely unprofessional and degrades the society of graphic designers as a whole.
Definitely something to think about in the future. Who knows, if the graphic design community had not be so vocal in their thoughts against the logo, it might have worked out in what UC intended the logo to be used for. Since we do not really know what the logo was supposed to be used for and thus we should have waited before criticizing.
I might be on the other side of the popular opinion, but actually enjoy the new logo that the UC graphics team came up with. It's a shame that the presentation of it all was screwed up and led to public confusion. I definitely recommend reading the article that Daniel commented with above before passing judgement on the new logo. I mean the logo was around for over a year before a fuss was raised about it.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, on to the logo itself, I think it's a progressive take on a university identity. In my opinion its a simple, minimalistic update. It definitely sets itself apart from most major universities identity wise. I would argue the logo says that UC is progressive and willing to lead students into the future. The only thing about it that I'm not too sure on is the gradient on the ending of the "C", but after looking at it for a bit I can see why they went with that instead of having it be solid.