Last year, at least one institution scuttled its rebranding effort when students, faculty, and staff took to Facebook and soundly panned the identity before the planned launch. Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, is hoping to avert this outcome by asking its constituents-at least, those who are Facebook fans-to vote on a new logo. Stevens will roll out this logo in celebration of its 140th anniversary.
The poll is the latest step in a process that began last summer. The resulting logo and institutional rebranding is linked to plans for Stevens’ anniversary celebration. Michael Schinelli, the Institute’s associate vice president for graduate marketing and communications, notes that their design partner, Spiral Design, had developed identity materials. “We were going through the normal approval process until earlier this year when we talked about getting the community to give input on the designs. I suggested that we create a Facebook campaign that would allow stakeholders to vote—and also grow our social media fan base.”
Spiral developed four concepts. Schinelli reports, “The designs went through a series of revisions and we settled on four that we thought were both divergent enough to offer a choice and strong enough to be a winner. The poll also has info on the design elements, such as the authentic characteristics, history and aspirations that would identify Stevens better than our current logo. These include our gatehouse, the river (we’re perched above the river, overlooking New York City), Alexander Calders artwork (he was an alum), the University motto Per Aspera, Ad Astra (Through adversity to the stars), and the S for Stevens.”
Stakeholders can cast their vote via a Facebook poll to be launched today. The poll will be open through 9 a.m. Friday.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?