To change the logo or not to change the logo. That seems to be the question of the week at Auburn, with the Student Government Association saying the logo won’t be changed and a spokesperson for the University saying that hasn’t yet been decided.
“We have temporarily postponed implementation of the AU logo within the new system to allow opportunity for continued dialogue with stakeholders,” Preston Sparks, director of university communications services, said in an email statement Tuesday to The Auburn Plainsman. “The recommendations are not yet mandated.”
That statement followed a Monday meeting of the SGA, in which SGA president Mary Margaret Turton announced that Ronald Burgess, Auburn University’s chief operating officer, told her that the University will not be changing its classic logo.
“Because we’ve had conversations regarding the visual identity system for the past few weeks in here, I do want to share an update that I got this morning,” Turton said. ”General Burgess announced that we will not be moving forward with the new logo this morning. We have plans from that directive to continue using the traditional Auburn logo, so I just wanted to share that.”
The initial logo change, which was first reported by Brandon Marcello of Auburn Undercover in early August, was one aspect of an update that the University proposed to its ”visual identity system,” a term that describes elements such as fonts and design that make up Auburn branding.
SGA passed a resolution last week requesting clarification about the University’s visual identity system. Some SGA members had met with the administration regarding the logo in December 2018 and hadn’t heard anything since, according to SGA senators.
Senators contested the purpose of the resolution for two hours to determine how to approach University administration. The resolution initially requested that the University’s Office of Communication and Marketing halt its adoption of the new logo. It was rewritten to ask for an update on where the University stood in implementing the logo.
“During the open forum at last week’s senate, some students shared that they preferred the old logo due to tradition, the impacts of implementation, financial costs, replacement timeline and how the overall process occurred,” Turton said.
After the senate resolution passed, SGA leaders conferred with University officials to evaluate the status of the visual identity system.
”The decision [to keep using the classic logo] was announced in a regularly scheduled meeting with various University administrators and department heads,” Turton said.
Burgess referred The Plainsman to the Office of Communication and Marketing. In response to multiple requests for a phone interview, Preston Sparks, director of university communications services, sent the following statement from the University:
”Auburn is constantly looking for ways to elevate the University’s instruction, research and outreach missions in the eyes of the Auburn Family and those unfamiliar with Auburn. As part of our efforts, we sought the best branding and design firm in the world to develop recommendations to help us raise Auburn’s profile and optimize the way we communicate our brand across all mediums, especially digital.”
Questions that were sent to the University on Tuesday afternoon from The Plainsman regarding which firm redesigned the identity system and how much was paid have not been answered as of Wednesday afternoon.
The firm also made other revisions to the visual identity system, including “a refreshed wordmark, new font pairings and improved guidelines for using the AU mark across all colleges, schools and units,” according to the statement Sparks sent.
The revised logo appears in signage and architecture inside the Brown-Kopel Student Achievement Center, which is part of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, and Horton-Hardgrave Hall, the University’s newest facilities that opened at the start of the fall semester.
It’s unclear whether the revised logo will continue to be implemented.
“We were asked to use that as those buildings came online, but we’ve not received any official word from the University that it’s going to be scrapped,” said Austin Phillips, interim director of the engineering office of communications and marketing. “It would be premature to say if we were to replace those or anything along those lines. It was a request made by University officials and we followed their lead, just like the College of Business did, per their request.”
The University said in an August press release that the change was necessary to make the “AU” more usable in “digital forms.”
The “U” is larger than the “A” in the traditional logo, and in the proposed new logo the “A” is equal in size to the “U,” according to the University’s Office of Communication & Marketing.
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