When edgy branding reaches the edge

When Canada’s University of Waterloo’s unveiled it’s new brand identity was leaked, students revolted to the only place where they know to scream — Facebook — arguing the new identity doesn’t befit a proud, venerable institution of higher education.

From their Facebook group:

The University of Waterloo is undergoing a rebranding campaign starting in Fall 2009. The new logo has been leaked, and we, along with many other students and alumni, do not believe it represents UW’s prestige and degree of professionalism properly. This group is a place for students and alumni who are against this new logo representing our University to join and voice their opinion.

Please note these new logos will (according to reports) replace the current UW logos in all applications, with the exception of diplomas and convocation ceremonies (where the official seal is used instead).

The logo design blog Brand New covered this issue and I’m not going to attempt to rehash his good analysis.

But the hoopla over the logo ignores the fact that the re-brand — even if it’s a bit jarring to look at — is really edgy. And in the staid world of higher ed design, I can appreciate some thinking outside of the box and given the logo was leaked, we’re not even sure what the entire campaign was intended to communicate, so how can those protesting it, really assess it on its merits?

Then again, why should we let an opportunity to protest get in the way of a little fairness? Though I wonder if there was any token student representation as part of this process…

Messages in a hypersocial world

These days, everyone thinks they’ve got a million friends. It’s not until you spend some time with people who spend little time using digital media that folks like me who are uber digital begin to recall a time when our social networks were much smaller and recall how much work goes into cultivating personal relationships and managing to sustain them amidst a barrage of information.

The bottom line: It sure takes a lot of work to build relationships and maintain them.

The social web gives us an uncanny opportunity to put a barrage of information out for the world to see and lets people decide how much (or little) they want to consume. We make the assumption that most people are able to sift through it successfully and thus, we’re offended when they’re not as responsive as we’d like to what we deem as important that either gets lost in the grand shuffle of noise.

It leads to people trying to develop new ways to “get their message out” when really, what’s needed is to:

1. Sharpen our focus
2. Distill the noise out
3. Narrow the audience

Making it easier for our audiences to really listen to what’s being said, I find it’s almost better to say less than to say more, even as the urge exists (as well as the mediums) to overshare.