A Fingerprint, a maze, a man-hole cover. It's been called all that before. But it's really just outdated, say university officials.
The former logo for OSU, called the 'Hex', was officially given the boot and an updated word-mark has taken its place.
"The older image is not unified and didn't work on web pages," said Stella Coakley, president for the OSU faculty senate.
This time the theme is a unified image -- that's the goal of a university logo, Coakley said.
"We want it to be readily identifiable so it can be used across campus."
"It's bold, concise and modern," said Curt Pederson, vice president for university advancement.
Pederson presented the word-mark to the faculty senate on Feb. 5th.
OSU's new symbol was also brought to the Alumni Association, the Memorial Union, College deans, College Cabinet and OSU president Ed Ray.
"The response has been very encouraging -- no one's yelled at me or thrown things -- it's been very positive and supportive.
Because it's crisp and clean it's generally accepted," said Coakley
Efforts to change the 'Hex,' which has been the OSU logo since 1989, began in 2001, Pederson said.
But budget stress and then national upheaval with the Sept. 11 attacks made the university prioritize and they figured there wasn't much of a need to change the logo at that time, Pederson said.
In 2003, several other designs for the new logo were posted on a Web site for people to vote on.
"The initial reaction was resoundingly -- 'worse than what we had,'" said Coakley.
With the new symbol for OSU comes the question redecorating.
Coakley said the university will replace and put up signs as needed, but no plans have been made so far to instigate a campus-wide re-signing effort.
"We've talked about how nice it would be to find non-general funds, like a grant or donation, to change some obvious signage around campus," said Pederson.
But they're not holding their breath.
"If there's an inexpensive way to change the sign, that's great," Pederson said.
Both Pederson and Coakley said the university has been supportive of not wasting.
"There's no push to dump old stuff," Coakley said.
However, others around campus aren't so optimistic of this so-called low-cost endeavor.
"The idea that a logo is a cheap thing to change is wrong," said Muneera Spence, assistant professor of graphic design who was also a member of the consultative team that reviewed the different possibilities for the new logo.
"There are many opinions. Some people are going to hate it, some will like it," Pederson said.
Tina Chovanec, director of university publications, an integral person to the redesigning effort, was unavailable for comment.
Author: Daily Barometer
Website Acquired: www.barometer.orst.edu
Date Written: 2004-03-05
