In case you have bad eyes, this happy face says- “What do you want to be?” It’s this year’s combination of logo and motto for Foundation University here in Dumaguete.
This university makes a new logo every year- usually an iconic picture with some (hopefully) inspirational text. Designing it is a communal enterprise within the school.
Various staff members make suggestions for what it should look like, what it should say to be most attractive to new students, and also what will be most intriguing to outsiders who see the tarpaulins along the campus walls beside the street.
A logo and a motto can take anywhere from a few hours to several months to design. But in the end, it has to be ready at the beginning of the new school year in June.
Most school logos stay the same year after year- smiling faces in school uniforms, a school seal somewhere, and words that say “Join us Here!” This may indentify the “Brand Name”, but it doesn’t say much about the school itself.
The logo for a university should communicate several things at a glance: the mission of the school, it’s vision, it’s style, and it’s spirit. It’s hard to do all this at once, and maybe impossible; but at least enough can be said at a glance to give a basic feeling of what the school stands for.
In this case, the idea was to combine the statement “What do you want to be?” with the logo itself- by having those words produce a smiling student’s face in a black and white line drawing.
This image says several things at once. Before you even see the words, the bold line drawing, used instead of an ordinary photograph, suggests a progressive school, a school willing to be different in a forceful way. The smile on the figure’s face says “our students enjoy themselves”.
And when you finally decipher the words that compose the face, you see the motto
“What do you want to be?” with its implication that whatever it is you want to be, this school can help you to attain your goals.
There’s a risk- all this may not come across right away; but it will in time. Until then, it is at least a bold design, that will be recognized and identified at once with Foundation U. And also looks good on a white t-shirt.
