UC Davis Design Professors reflect on the UC monogram
The University of California Office of the President has suspended the new monogram. Daniel M. Dooley, senior vice president for external relations at UCOP largely attributed the suspension to an “unfortunate and false narrative” – that the new monogram would completely replace the traditional seal.
The logo design, evidently a huge livewire, offered a unique opportunity for design to once again enter the dinner table conversation and remind us how much design matters. Surprisingly, few if any media outlets included a response from the UC Davis Design Department at UC Davis, the only one of its kind in the UC system.
For the record, according to UCD design department head Tim McNeil, no one in the UC Davis design department was consulted or asked for input on the new logo. That credit goes to four in-house designers at UCOP in Oakland.
When asked whether James Housefield, a UC Davis design professor, liked the new logo, he replied, “My feeling is that it is immaterial whether any of us ‘like’ the logo,” said Housefield.
“Speaking with our grad students and undergrads about design criticism I urge them to quickly acknowledge, and then move away from, initial feelings of ‘liking’ a work of art or design.
“In our society we are so often urged to register our feelings as if they were a verdict; is the online "like" so far from "thumbs down" in the ancient Roman arena? I'd like to hope that the next generation of designers will imagine a more complex form of interaction design [than the 'like' system].”
Housefield, who was interviewed prior to the monogram’s suspension, also made another point about giving a nod to precedent.
“It's intriguing to consider the UC monogram in comparison to (Shepard Fairey) OBEY's rebranding of the Rolling Stones for their 50th anniversary celebrations. The Stones chose a design largely based upon John Pasche's "lips" logo from the 1971 album Sticky Fingers. The UCOP design team similarly looked to tradition as they imagined how the seal might form the basis of a systematic approach to identity and communications. Unlike the Stones, UC has had its seal but no logo until now.”
Shepard Fairey's redesigned Rolling Stones logo
Simon Sadler, an architectural history professor in the design department and author of “A Culture of Connection: How Design Makes Us All Californian” from Boom! magazine, was available for comment after the logo suspension.
Here are his thoughts on the suspension in its entirety:
“First, the logo reminded people of capitalist corporations. But history contains all sorts of other corporate models. Nations, nobilities, religions. And universities, which are one of the great survivors, far older than capitalist corporations. Their mission is different, even where it involves profit. They’re about the long term of discovery, not the short term of markets. Ultimately, they’re about the top line (“Let there be light!”), not the bottom line. With an identity that storied, opponents of the new monogram were puzzled why UC would want to look anything like a capitalist brand.”
“Maybe UC didn’t want to look anything like a capitalist brand. I certainly hope not. Which leads to a second possible source of identity crisis. UC’s destiny is intertwined with that of California, which is not (yet) a capitalist corporation. California is a much more complex phenomenon. A state, a body politic, and also an idea, almost a utopian one. The larger identity rolled out for UC tries (it hasn’t yet been canceled) to capture Californian “spirit” — let there be light. It pushes back careless visual communication to better portray UC as a sublime unity, optimistic and Enlightening, a source of life in California.
“A couple of things haven’t been getting communicated, though [emphasis added]. The scheme was drawing on Californian New Wave design from the 80s, but people maybe aren’t quite ready for an 80s revival just yet, and so they’re associating the colors with beach culture. The monogram’s buffering C tried to convey animation, yes, but the life of California doesn’t come down to one thing, one icon. A bear in the flag, maybe, but that’s about the thrill of having your camping gear eaten. The Golden Gate Bridge? Yes, but it’s about the place, the drive, the connection, the scale. A surfboard, perhaps, but surfing is all about the ride along the edge of the world, not the board itself.
“The controversy around the monogram may in the end be because UC is irreducible. An historic, public, plural institution for wisdom at the world’s center of the now and the soon. It couldn’t be captured in this or any monogram. No wonder creating an identity for UC created so much controversy. That’s the business of great universities.”
Here is a copy of Wet Magazine, an instance of the 80s new wave design that Simon Sadler mentions.
But wait, folks. Successful online university emblems do and can exist. Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduced a new logo and graphic identity website. “The reason we created a logo separate from the seal was, well, when you have a lineup of seals, you see a series of circles with hard to read words and it was difficult to distinguish MIT's seal from every other university's,” said Bara Blender, communications strategist for MIT. "The MIT logo is a distinct mark that is easily recognizable. We reached out to key departments and explained to them the value of the new logo and how using it would reinforce their connection to MIT."
MIT's simplified logo, introduced almost a decade ago.
MIT, however, does not face the same set of challenges a multi-campus university has. “I think the process was simpler than what the University of California went through only because we have one campus with all the key decision makers in one location,” said Blender.
So in the meantime, please, put down your pitchforks. Maybe the issue the bigger issue is about education funding. Whatever it is, the best thing to do now is talk to a friend about what does make good design for the UC or for California. Who knows, maybe UCOP will listen.
