College of Charleston President Updates Campus on Brand Identity

Dear Campus Community, 

I hope the spring semester went well for all of you and that you are looking forward to your summer plans, whatever they may be. 

I’m writing with an update on our institutional branding. As you may recall, I announced to campus last semester that I had appointed a campus working group to evaluate our university’s current logo system. This working group, led by Vice President of Marketing and Communications Ron Menchaca, included representatives from all our major academic and administrative divisions. The group has submitted its recommendations to me, and I’m pleased to share with you a summary of the reprioritized structure for our university logo system. 

To be clear, this working group was not charged with creating a new institutional logo. Creating a new campus logo is a major undertaking that would involve many constituencies, as well as significant resources and time. The College is not adopting a new institutional logo at this time. 

Here’s what we are doing: 

The current Randolph Hall logo and wordmark will remain a part of our logo system, but these elements will be used more often for external building signage and internal communications. 

Our current Athletics logo – referred to as the Block C – will become more prominent in our external marketing and recruitment efforts. The goal is to make the College of Charleston name instantly recognizable and to reinforce the interdependence between our university and our beloved city of Charleston.  

 

Because the Block C logo did not previously include the full College of Charleston name, our Marketing and Communications team has now incorporated our name using one of the College’s approved fonts – Avenir Next LT Pro.

The Block C and the College of Charleston name can now be used in conjunction with your unit identifier. This application will be appropriate for items such as event flyers, business cards and internal building signage. Our Marketing and Communications team is in the process of designing new unit identifiers like the example below. Unless you have an urgent need for a pending order, please allow time for this design work to be completed, as the College has numerous unit identifiers. 

Our Marketing and Communications team has revised the College’s official brand manual to reflect these changes and to provide guidance to the campus community on which logos are appropriate in different cases. If you are unsure which logo to use in a particular circumstance, please contact Marketing and Communications team by completing a service request form. 

In the interest of sustainability, please exhaust all current supplies of printed materials with the Randolph Hall logo (business cards, letterhead, etc.) before ordering new items with the Block C logo and type treatment. 

And finally, as a reminder, the College’s brand manual is official university policy. Please do your part to ensure that we present our brand identity to internal and external audiences consistently and professionally. 

Sincerely, 

Andrew 

Andrew T. Hsu, Ph.D.
President
College of Charleston