Logo Effectiveness- Lauren's post
Lauren had technical difficulties, so I'm posting this for her.
Logo effectiveness
I found this week’s reading on message design very interesting and thought-provoking. As consumers in a society constantly encouraging us to spend money, we are affected by advertising images and logos hundreds of times a day. Many of us come to class in the morning with Starbucks coffee cups. We take notes with Bic pens. We walk around campus in our Nike sneakers. The text states that “a good logo is simple, can be used in all sorts of media, is easy to recognize, maintains its design integrity and is durable.” The three aforementioned examples fit this description perfectly.
Clearly, logo design and choice isn’t everything. BP, the world’s second-largest oil company, came under fire in August for having to shut down oil production while repairs were made to a corroded 16-mile feeder line to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, thereby sending the price of oil up. This revelation came after a string of public relations nightmares for BP – including an accident at a Texas BP refinery that killed 15 and injured hundreds more, and a new $1 billion BP platform in the
(Lexis-Nexis search: The New York Times “Green Logo, But BP is Old Oil” by Joe Nocera. August 12, 2006.)
Can you think of other instances where a company went through great measures to rebrand itself, only to face a similarly sticky situation?
Our very own
http://www.alligator.org/pt2/060718logo.php
Although other logos were proposed in the redesign, a plain, blue monogram of UF’s initials was chosen. If a logo is “something like your face” as the text states, do you like the new “face” of UF? Does it make a positive impression? Is it simply-designed? Does it translate across media?
Lastly, this article is just a fun one I found that I had to share with the class.
http://www.hey.com/bydanegolden/super_size/
Although this article is clearly tongue-in-cheek, do you think there’s any truth in the red and yellow color scheme encouraging us to eat more fast food?
posted by Meredith @ 10/17/2006 08:02:00 PM
2 Comments:
I do not really like the University of Florida’s new logo. To me it looks a little unprofessional and does not convey what, in my mind, I would want to convey as a university. To me, the new logo makes UF look like it is a new school, possibly one that is “hip” and “cool” that is intended to appeal to a younger crowd. The old UF logo made it look like it was an official university that has been around since the 1800s. The old logo made UF look more established and unchanged by time; like the same quality of education that was present in the 1800s is still present today.
I understand that UF may want to appeal to a younger crowd. They do not want to come across to high school students as the “school your mom went to.” I do think that high school students who are looking for a good university to attend will not be influenced by the logo. I know when I was looking at undergrad universities and graduate universities that I did not even know what the schools’ logos looked like.
I understand that a university’s logo is very important. To me, a logo should be traditional and unchanged by time in order to convey to students and alumni alike, that the education and university have not changed and will remain a university that they can be proud to say they attended.
The new logo for UF clearly is a controversial issue for the students, professors, alumni members…you name it. As a new comer to the university, I have no hard feelings towards the new logo but I do realize that many are not happy with this new logo. I’m trying to put my shoes into the mindset of the university’s administration team, public relations team, or whoever it is that decided to run the current “gator nation” campaign along with new logos. Clearly, the university detected a public relations problem, planned and programmed a solution, took action, and started communicating (p.341).
While the new attempt of the university is nothing to criticize, I found a theory in public relations that seemed relevant to this issue: relationship theory. Relationship theory notes us to pay more attention to the “connections between people” rather than to the “technical excellence” (Ferguson). This means public relations should focus on what it can do to bring mutual benefit via relationship building, not pulling each and every string to come up with a new strategy to gain attention. In this extent, I think if the university put the surrounding public’s benefic in the light, there would have been a different output.
I understand the change of university logo is for various purposes, but I see other conditions that can be taken into extent to develop positive relationships with their publics. It seems that organizations, corporations and so forth are neglecting the essential function of public relations in replacement for immediate outcome. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with changing your logo, renaming, creating symbols and framing messages. Whether you have a substance to back it up or not is the focal factor.
I only hope the change of logo and the implement of the gator nation campaign has a stable substance to prove its legitimacy.
Post a Comment
<< Home