Last Wednesday, students who opened up the Middlebury.edu webpage found themselves looking at a baffling new logo. With the start of the New Year, the College has rolled out a new visual icon and brand identity system for the College and its affiliate institutions. The new logo – a shield featuring icons of Old Chapel, the Green Mountains, a book and a globe – is designed to give thematic unity to the various entities that make up the College. This array of institutions includes the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, the Middlebury C.V. Starr Schools Abroad, and the Middlebury School of the Environment. While it was undoubtedly a difficult task to unify all these schools under one icon, the new logo falls far short of what many students expected from a long term identity system.
Although there were a variety of meetings and forums held to discuss the visual icon as it was under development, the final product left many students and alumni confused and disappointed. An unscientific poll of the Campus’ Facebook and Twitter followers had nearly 80 percent of almost 200 respondents express disappointment with the logo. Many alumni, weighing in on social media, reminded others of the 2007 “maple leaf” logo for the College – a logo which was subsequently retracted after students and alumni expressed outrage at what they saw was the poor design and confusing imagery.
The most common critiques expressed by students have to do with the visual icon’s too-slick, corporate look and its use of the globe and book images. The Editorial Board agrees. After the logo’s rollout, some jokingly referenced how the globe and book call to mind the “emoji” images of a smartphone keyboard. Moreover, the globe is simply confusing; The World Bank and the World Wide Web both use a nearly identical “vortex” logo. As a result, some students expressed confusion as to whether the new image was a reference to international studies or technological innovation. The need to unify the College’s schools and programs is understandable, but the globe and book come across as simplistic and obvious. Middlebury is world-renowned for its strength in languages and international studies and the need to hammer home this strength with a globe image in the logo is perhaps misplaced.
Part of the blame has to be on us, the students. The numerous discussions and sessions outlining the plans for the new logo were opportunities for students to weigh in, and now that the end result is less than satisfactory, we have to acknowledge that perhaps we did not make our opinions known as much as we could have.
Nevertheless, overall the logo comes across as one lacking subtlety and not necessarily fit for the long-term. The Board would have liked to see a variety of options released to the public prior to the official launch to explore what the other possibilities were – a stylized “M”? A revamped College seal? Either of these would have been infinitely preferable to the final product that is theoretically here to stay. The Editorial Board hopes that we can reconsider the new visual icon; if not, we hope that the next visual icon is an improvement.
