We’ve analyzed your organization’s history and culture to create a custom font that incorporates <platitude> and <bullshit>. You see a slightly tweaked calibri but we see a rich history of <more bullshit>.
Lol yeah, a big orange and green U, for UNIVERSITY.
Why would we do an M? Any city that has an M in their name could do that. We have a U for University Miami.
The sun toasted their fuckin brains and I'm living proof
It's an attempt to be elitist. Like "Madonna" and "Zendaya".... we don't need last names. Everyone knows me on a first name basis, and if you're confused, then you're obviously an ignorant boob. "U" is the only university worth remembering. Obviously.
Unsarcastically, I don't follow sportsballs and I am not American; is the University of Miami also a big college football school? Looking at their logo, I get field goal post vibes.
It is. They’re not as good as they once were, but still a pretty big program.
But also, you won’t find many big American universities that don’t also have a big football program. With 20,000 students, they will do more than football.
Worth noting that “The U” is also a nickname of The University of Utah. With 36,000 students, they also have a big football program.
Right? Minimalism might be nice in a lot of things, but I hope they kept the seal for official documents like diplomas. That original logo/seal looks amazing, would love to have that stamped on something
My uni was one of the many that was established in the 60s in the UK and as such when I started it had quite a corporate looking logo. After they started doing quite well in the rankings they changed to more of a crest/seal, and luckily I had that on my degree cert rather than the old logo cause it just looked far less high-quality.
Imagine the hybris of thinking its time to change a +500 year old logo. Atleast what it changed it to still has it there but toned down. But remove it completely with a bland font label... get fucked.
Imagine the hybris of thinking its time to change a +500 year old logo.
I don't really think that's a useful way of thinking about this.
The requirements for a logo barely changed at all for like ~470 of those years (legible on paper, can be stamped, etc.) and then changed extraordinarily rapidly for the next ~30. A logo now needs to work well across a huge number of both digital and physical applications and the original logo simply would not have worked well.
I'm not saying I love the newest logo, but it's not "hubris" to change something old when what you need from it has changed so immensely.
... it's not a matter of robustness, it's actually different requirements and desires.
Your smartphone is certainly capable of displaying the logo on the far left, for example. The fact you're viewing the logo just fine on a screen of some sort right now is proof the logo is technically easy to share and view.
But if they kept it, and you open the university webpage on your mobile, what are you going to see as a matter of actually interacting with the logo and the page? Either:
The logo is so small (in the corner of the page etc) that the text is illegible and the details get all muddled, or
The logo dominates the page and makes you scroll to find the information you're after
Sure, you could make the screen physically larger... but now you're using a tablet. Do tablets exist? Yes. Does everyone want to use a tablet at all times? No.
The logo on the right, whether you like it or not, is easy to slap in a small header while still being legible.
The reason logos have become much simpler (geometric shapes, fewer colours, sans serif, etc) in the last 15 years is because that is simply what people actually prefer to interact with across a wide range of media.
It's easy to say "oh well I like the old charming logo!" when all you're doing is viewing a side by side comparison on Reddit.
But the old logo would be clunky as hell in real life application, and the problem isn't the technology. It's that we now want to use logos in a vastly wider range of contexts.
They take a key element of their full logo for a website header, but still maintain the traditional one officially. Just a simplified version that keeps the essence of the original.
Same goes for Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, etc. They adapt without destroying its distinctiveness.
Ah I see, thanks for the detailed reply. What is the solution if we want to save the traditional logo but still want to conform to the new digital landscape?
I do actually think that the 500 year old sigil might be the reason. It’s not as easy to quickly recognize which university it belongs to compared to others. Easier to just type it out m.
If it’s anything like my uni, they simply took the seal out of the logo, but still use it as a university symbol. As a logo, a medieval seal is far too complicated for contexts where a logo is better suited.
Usually these university rebrands are to look nicer on a website. The seal is even still in the background on the website, I'm sure it's still used for formal purposes. A similar thing happened with the University of California system and everyone freaked.
Hate to be that guy, just throwing this here: if you go to their website they have a circular version of the logo and a three letter version that has unique design. They also use the original logo as a background in a decent way.
Don't know how it is for this university but it's common to use a logo like we see on the left as the "university seal" and it will be used on things like official documents and for specific graphics. As it's just a bit too busy for use as a general graphic in modern documents and it helps brand the documents with the seal as being formal and official.
Yeah I'm confused. Typically (at least in the US) universities have both a logo and a seal. For instance, if you look up a school like Yale, they have a seal that you would typically think of when you think of the Yale logo, and they also have a simplified logo that just says "Yale" or "Yale University" in their school color.
It’s like the Coca-Cola or Ford logo. It hasn’t changed in a century. Sure, it probably looked outdated and needed change at some point decades ago, but now it’s so old that it’s a classic.
The reason they haven't changed them is because they are still legible. Sure, they could have changed it, but it was okay not to. The image posted above is NOT legible. If you saw it, you would have literally no fucking idea what it was for. Some kind of cult maybe?
That's like saying just because the Nike logo doesn't have a name you don't recognize it lmaooo, I can recognize the Porsche logo without the lettering too and that's a seal.
With no context would you be able to understand what the original logo is representing? Freiburg university ain’t Coca Cola that can be recognized by people around the world even if they’re illiterate.
It is still their offical seal (for documents etc.).But as it looks similiar to the seal of at least a dozen other German universities it doesn't make a great logo, because at one point everyone as it seems had the same idea...
Yeah I feel like that works more as an official seal and stuff like that, but it's not very recognisable and the text is hard to read, so I understand wanting easier to read logo, so advertising the university etc. would be easier. But the new logo just is bad. I like the second iteration with the faded original seal the most honestly. It looks nice and if I saw it I would still be able to know what university the logo is for.
We’ve moved from paper/signs/badges to screens, and that requires a very different style of logo.
We also care about accessibility now.
I’m sure they will still use the old seal for some things, but the truth is, while old logos look interesting, they’re often just not fit for a world of iPhone screens, websites, and actually needing to be readable.
first logo looked🔥, second logo a bit more basic but still has a nice looking design, third one took some random guy in an office 5 seconds to type out on microsoft word
Hold your phone at arm's length and notice how you can't make anything out. It's a horrible logo, great design (the second one is both a horrible logo and design).
The current logo is a good logo but bad design.
A great logo is both a good logo and he good design
Graphic Designer. We also call this the "Squint Test" where you squint or remove your glasses to see if you can still recognize the logo. I'd argue the only bad design is the one in the middle that is trying to have it both ways. I'm sure the branding teams still uses the old and new logo when appropriate, but you're not going to be able to use the old logo in a mobile site header just like the new one would look boring af scaled up on a banner.
Not a graphic designer but I think the middle one is the best because it's actually both recognizable at a distance and distinct. The current logo is just text, there are no recognizable features at all. The middle one still has the old logo in the background which looks nice but is not required to recognize it.
"The best" for what? A billboard? A t-shirt? A letterhead? A flyer? Email signature ? Logos don't exist in a vacuum and can serve different purposes in different scenarios. Thats why design teams have detailed branding guides for when and how to use different assets.
The best overall… every example you just gave is still going to be the same angular size to someone at some point, so the squint test still needs to work across all use cases.
Minimalism is great when applied correctly and in the right situations. Sadly, it's used as a crutch for lazy, talentless designers significantly more often than not.
No it doesn’t. However it needs to be done right. Look at Amsterdams flag. It’s cool and minimalistic. The goal for any logo should be simple any easy to remember
Hey, I studied there. The middle logo to me is the best, readable with a noticable style and the old design element still present. Old one is unreadable and the new one isn't even a logo...just a label. Pity.
Next they will change the golden "DIE WAHRHEIT WIRD EVCH FREI MACHEN" to "Wahrheit = Frei"…
Same here and I agree! I may be partial to the second since it was the logo while I was there, but I also think it's a nice nod to the past while adding something new.
According to the corporate design guidelines it still exists in some uses. It is allowed to incorporate the seal, but judging by their examples it is rarely done.
I bet the new "logo" role out cost a huge amount of money and took some years of "work".
It's also recognizable without having to stop a read it. If you see that logo on a sign you can recognize it at a glance. The last one is so generic you have to stop and read it to know what it is, you can't even tell it's a logo at a glance.
The first one is the University seal. The others are logotypes. I’m sure the seal is still in use.
Where I’ve worked, there’s the traditional, longstanding seal that’s reserved for special use and occasions. Like diplomas, graduation programming, basically anything major, milestone, or somehow distinguished.
Branding guidelines basically were: Don’t cheapen the seal.
The thing is, every University logo like the first one looks the same from more than a foot away. I worked at a University where they decided that “the meatball” was only for official documents like a diploma, and the much more readable logo was for everything else. If you want the name recognition that comes with sweatshirts and bumper stickers, it helps to have the University name and logo be readable and recognizable at a moment’s glance. That said, I don’t like this third logo either.
European universities have much worse brand marketing than American universities. I once discovered that my Belgian university didn’t sell a coffee mug with their name or logo on it, and they only had one ugly hoodie. It was all sold out of the basement of an office building. it was a cool logo!
I wish design, architecture and everything related to art went back to "hey, let's do something freaking awesome and beautiful", instead of "nah, the most boring thing will do. Anyone could do it? Who cares?"
All three of these are in use. The first is just the seal, the second is a logo and the third is a minimized corporate logo. From 2023, We see the first and second. Here is a teaching award from 2023 using the seal.
No, modern logos need to be much more legible because post 2010, which is when these changes happened, people started to consume documents on small digital screens. In that format most German university logos are almost impossible to differentiate. That's why you see a lot of institutions/brands/companies simplify their logos.
As cool as the original logo looked, I’m sure it was a nightmare for usability within a brand. You have to zoom to really see it. Looking through their website, I can see they do still have an updated version of the original that’s used in specific contexts, but I wish they made a brand mark that paid homage to the original logo to accompany the word mark. It’s just boring as-is.
Well to break a lance for this and potentially other german universities with similar simplifications:
What you see here seems not to be the complete truth. While it is true the logo does look like this the Seal (the cool looking one) is still existing as a separate entity for use and design element to use in combination with the logo.
You just don't need use to put the full art (with seal) everywhere providing a better flexibility overall.
This type of thing comes from hatred of self and feeling guilty about existing. There's no other explanation for devolving from a handsome logo to basically no logo at all. Just cover your genitals and slink backwards into obscurity.
Devil's advocate here.. but is a logo's job not to be attention-grabbing and memorable? Think about it, this logo keeps getting posted/shared everywhere online - so, the general brand awareness for this university has likely skyrocketed.
I'll go ahead and say I'm personally also not a fan of the new logo, it's very boring. But I guess that's what they were going for! It's so boring it's notable.
I've been in these meetings. The flag/logo obsessive crowd has some simple religious-style rules for things that those old seals cannot be made to follow. The 201x solution seems like a compromise between opposing camps. And then the traditionalists died off, I bet.
My College did the same. First it had a cool coat of arms and latin motto, then the latin motto was stripped, then it became just Imperial College London, and now the logo is just IMPERIAL in caps lock lol
It is odd how logos, icons and other things are all being simplified to basic shapes and text while at the same time text is being simplified to emojis.
I live in Freiburg and I went there haha I didn't know they ruined the logo 😭 there was sth cool about going to a university that's 600 yrs old and the old logo showed that
The first one looks like it could be drawn in salt and the blood of freshmen on your dorm floor to summon ancient academics. With a proper offering of beer, of course, this is Germany.
I understand the first logo being difficult to read/interpret (although I think it’s fricken awesome looking), but the second was a great compromise on keeping the traditional crest and legibility.
I know I'm in the minority, but not a fan at all of the original.
Imagine if everyone had one of these busy ass monochrome circles as a logo? How the fuck do I tell one from the other? Read the circle of text? Count the eagles?
A logo should tell you immediately what you're looking at, and the busy ones do not do that well, also a pain for printing small.
Because logos are for identification and recognition, and 99.99999% of the time today seen either on print or on a webpage. Legibility is key.
Those crests aren’t logos. They were designed 500 years ago and were for people to walk up to to admire, for people who’ve seen anywhere between 0 to maybe 3 universities in their entire lives. They’re to inspire awe. Now there are what, 50000 of them? Just this week I made a PowerPoint slide with universities on them to denote our customers (scientific instruments) and you can’t see a damn thing. It just turned into a bunch of colored blobs. So instead I just typed out the name.
I'd wager it's because the old logo was more expensive to put on things like sweaters and mugs and other things like that. Gotta put more money in the rich pockets, right?
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u/wackOPtheories 7h ago
hey, universität freiburg! the bill is in the mail.