| Published: Waubonsee Insight |
| Date: September 2006 |
| Section: Features |
Comments: This article is living proof that irony exists. I was the one who had to write this article, as, at the time, my only other staff member was quite opposed to writing anything but restaurant reviews (long story).
What makes that ironic is that I despise the new WCC logo and I routinely trashed it, called it a "tiara" and insulting the college for how they chose it.
Honestly, look at this thing: |
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By: Ian Essling
A new sight greeted students when they showed up for classes this semester; Waubonsee Community College had a new logo.
Gone was the famous "Chief" symbol; instead, a new design featuring a sunrise and collegiate shield design adorned the various buildings, books and posters around campus.
I recently sat down with Paula Amenta, the Director of Marketing & Communications for Waubonsee, to discuss the new logo, the process involved in creating it, and the future of Waubonsee's "brand identity."
Beginning in September 2005, Waubonsee Community College started a project to "reassess the brand identity of the college," Amenta explained. "There was a lot of inconsistency in our current designs."
These inconsistencies manifested themselves in a variety of ways, including a vast array of different colors being used on books and flyers, as well as variations of the original "Chief" logo.
This branding process sought to consolidate all the different designs into one coherent standard; along with the new logo and tagline, the project also developed a 'color palette' that will be used as a standard for creating new material, to insure consistency across the board.
For years, Waubonsee has been represented by the "Chief" logo, a design that has been synonymous with "Waubonsee" since 1967.
Shortly after the college was founded in 1966, a design for the logo was created and finalized in time for the first day of classes on September 11th, 1967.
In 2003, another change to Waubonsee's branding was made when the institutional initiative called "Learning First!" began.
The mark first appeared on WCC correspondence and flyers in spring of 2004.
The purpose of the "Learning First!" tagline was to strengthen and bring additional focus to the college's effort to become more "learning-centered."
While not a complete logo, the "Learning First!" design was used as a supplementary design to the main Waubonsee logo and tagline.
The Learning First! graphical element will be retired, however, the tagline and mission remain unchanged, and Learning First! will appear in place of the "Where Futures Take Shape," subheading on some Waubonsee publications (similar to how the "Community Education" heading is used).
Waubonsee's program to develop this new brand was multi-layered; first, a Brand Identity Commission (BIC) was formed to oversee the entire process.
This committee included 15 members, ranging from faculty and administrators to staff and student representatives.
Scientific Verdicts, a strategic communication and research company, was hired to conduct interviews and gather opinions from a wide variety of sources, including students, graduates, community residents and local employers.
Thirty-one in-depth interviews were conducted to establish common themes, and then these concepts were tested on over 700 people; included in this second test were 122 mall-intercept surveys, 250 online staff/faculty questionnaires, as well as nearly 400 Waubonsee students.
The BIC chose Scientific Verdicts because of their vast experience in the area of community college branding.
"[They had] worked with virtually every community college in northeastern Illinois," Amenta explained, "We recommended them because they have a level of knowledge, insight and expertise that can not be found anywhere else, and this proved to be very important [to] our process."
At this point, another company specializing in implementing branding strategies was contracted to produce actual mockups of possible designs and then study student and faculty reaction.
Moveo Integrated Branding worked with WCC's Institutional Research Department to survey 500 students (chosen from a cross-section of transfer classes, adult education and vocational classes), as well as 325 staff, faculty and administrators.
"The majority of those surveyed preferred the [sunrise design]," Amenta stated. "The [shield and fire design] was also popular because of the strong shield design, so we combined the two designs for the best of both worlds."
The entire branding process cost roughly $125,000, with $40,000 being spent on Scientific Verdicts' analysis and the other $85,000 going towards Moveo's strategy for implementing the design, as well as the actual, physical implementation and distribution of the design on tangible items such as books, catalogs and the Waubonsee website.
Amenta says that it is important to note that "no new dollars were spent on the brand identity project," because the existing Marketing and Communications budget was modified to accommodate the new project.
As shown, each part of the logo represents a different area, from the strong collegiate shape of the shield to the "early dawn" of the sunrise.
The latter pays homage to the college's namesake, Pottawatamie Indian Chief Wah-bahn-se, as Wah-bahn-se's name means "early dawn."
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