On Jan. 7, 2015, the College will roll out its new identity system. In late September the Board of Trustees approved the proposal put together by the Office of Communications and Marketing working with an outside consultant. All of the schools and programs that make up the Middlebury brand will adopt a new shield, as well as a common naming structure. All of the affiliate schools will add “Middlebury” at the beginning of their name (e.g. Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English). The newly minted Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey will receive a unique icon.
The changes that will occur on Jan. 7 will be most obvious on the websites. Most publications published after that date will have the updated design elements. As well, some of the adjustments that may take longer to implement, such as the replacing of signage in Monterey.
“To the outside world, and frankly to some of those on the inside, the relationships between the brands are not clear. Our intent was to restore the college to a place of centrality and differentiate it from the language schools or Bread Loaf. We thought this was a more effective way to explain who we are and make those ties a little clearer,” said Bill Burger, the Vice President for Communications and Marketing at an open meeting on Monday.
The new shield was one of many new designs considered in an attempt to visually unify the College and its many programs. It was briefly shown to the Campus in an interview with Burger. Central to the navy shield is a stylized rendition of Old Chapel, with a subtle line of mountains behind it. The three smaller elements that surround Old Chapel are a globe, a book and 1800, the year the College was founded.
“We have a very strong sense of place here,” Burger said when discussing the choice to heavily feature Old Chapel. He cited failed redesigns by the UC system, and at the College in 2008 as two instances in which there was a failure to acknowledge the history and traditions of the institution by trying something too sleek or modern.
The Middlebury Institute of International Affairs at Monterey will be the only affiliate to use a unique logo. According to Burger, the prominence of Old Chapel and the mountains felt appropriate for the New England spirit of the College and for its other schools, but was not representative of Monterey in Northern California. Burger said the compromise that resulted was the same navy shield that instead featured the Segal building.
“It was the first building the Institute bought after it was founded. It is the former Monterey Town library, and features beautiful Spanish colonial architecture,” Burger said.
Prestige and a global approach to liberal arts were two strong themes of the Middlebury brand, as identified by Mark Neustadt in a presentation to faculty in the spring of 2012. The College hired the Baltimore-based consultant to do research on the brand’s effectiveness, after a reaccreditation committee of faculty from colleges and universities around the country suggested that the relationship between the College, and its affiliates was not clear.
In his research, Neustadt found that the College’s brand identity was not clear. Along with a website redesign, he recommended that the College should construct a clear sub brand architecture.
Burger led a team that worked with Neustadt over the last two years to design a new icon and naming convention that together would form the new identity system. After the initial research, they worked from the summer of 2013 to the spring of 2014 on a number of possibilities for the naming conventions and icon, presenting ideas and gathering feedback from students, faculty and staff.
The result of this first stage of iterating and polling was an initial shield design that featured Old Chapel. After a second series of presentations to the community and more design sessions that lasted from February to May of this year, every element on the primary shield was refined, and Monterey’s unique shield was created.
Burger presented to over 300 members of the community, and said that although few students attended the public presentations, they tended to ask some of the best questions.
“This is an important part of design, not only assessing it aesthetically but also with the community,” he said.
