Waterloo + Change

Following the supposed 'leak' of the newly redesigned University of Waterloo logo yesterday, a large number of University of Waterloo students and alumni have expressed their reaction, providing commentary online through social media forums such as Twitter (follow the conversation using the hashtag #uwlogo) as well as the Facebook group, Students and Alumni Against the New University of Waterloo Logo, which currently has just over 3,200 members at the time of writing this blog post. Jesse Rodgers also has an insightful post on the turn of events, which he calls #uwlogogate.

The current logo and the proposed marketing logo side by side.

For readers unfamiliar with the University of Waterloo, below is a description of the institution found in many official UW publications:

In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's Technology Triangle, has become one of Canada’s leading comprehensive universities with 28,000 full and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs. In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow. Waterloo, as home to the world’s largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research, and discovery.

The University of Waterloo is also the alma mater of Mike Laziridis, founder and co-CEO of Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry; as well as the only school where Microsoft hires the most number of engineering graduates every year (UW was also one of five institutions, and the only Canadian stop, that Bill Gates visited on his tour last year).

So yes, UW is a major player in tech innovation, and hopefully in the coming years, in social innovation as well, where the University of Waterloo is an important partner in the Social Innovation Generation national collaborative. We are currently in the process of developing a cross-disciplinary graduate program in Social Innovation, as well as supporting the formation of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity & Innovation, among other things.

But I digress.

From my understanding, the newly redesigned logo (on the right) will be used for marketing purposes only, while the official UW seal (on the left), will still be printed on UW degrees and used in convocation ceremonies. However, all of this still has to be confirmed by the university administration.

The majority of the comments found online have been negative towards the redesigned logo, with many people expressing the sentiment that the new University of Waterloo logo does not convey the gravitas associated with institutions of higher education, especially if it comes with a price tag of several thousand dollars in tuition, books and other expenses every semester.

That being said, the more I think about it, the more I see where UW Graphics and UW External Relations are going with their efforts to rebrand the University of Waterloo, especially if we are to look at other institutions of higher education across North America.

(download)

Every change to the status quo in any social system is bound to rustle some feathers, and perhaps this would make for an excellent case study. I hope that the administration and the powers that be take into account and listen to the voices of the students and alumni who find this logo unprofessional, and yes, dare I say it, tacky. That being said, I would certainly be open to the administration building on this, and perhaps, redesigning the UW logo but this time, allowing an engaged and captive audience to participate in the process.

When I first started writing this blog post, there were only 3,200 members in the Facebook group. There are now over 3,500 members, and that was only one hour ago. (Time is currently 950pm EST)

And of course, in this day and age where mashups and lolcats are all the rage, the following was ultimately bound to happen. (Note: If you hadn't already noticed, I also included my favorite mashups with the university logos above).

Edit - 10:15pm EST July 22, 2009 - Posterous was being a bit wonky, so I had to manually fix some of the html code when this was first posted via email. The time is currently 10:15pm EST and there are now 3,640 members in the Facebook group

Edit - 10:30pm EST July 22, 2009 - Youtube video very recently uploaded to the Facebook group

Edit - 12:12am EST July 23, 2009 - It seems that this story (Facebook group, #uwlogo and #uwlogogate on Twitter), has caught the attention of the National Post

Edit - 8:30pm EST July 25, 2009 - A collection of blog posts and articles written about the ongoing #uwlogo and #uwlogogate issue

Articles

Friday, July 24, 2009