By In a university that is undergoing an identity crisis, logos and branding can be touchy subjects.
Starting out as Long Beach State College in 1949, our school’s name has shifted and molted its old name as it grew. Our school identity has evolved as we have, naturally.
But there’s nothing natural about the funk we have been in the past several years when it comes to branding.
California State University, Long Beach has an official seal and proudly embraces black and gold, but that is where the similarities end.
There are different logos and designs for nearly every college, department, sport and organization – you name it. Not to mention the several names we still answer to: Long Beach State, Cal Sate Long Beach, CSULB, LBSU, etc. This isn’t the witness protection program. Why haven’t we made a definitive stand on who we are as a school?
CSULB seems to have taken advantage of the newly renovated courtyards of the liberal arts buildings to push a rebranding agenda. The new trashcans are marked with an “LB” logo that looks suspiciously like the Long Beach State sports logo. Will this be a reoccurring trend with each renovation project in the future?
It is a subtle yet bold statement. These trashcans are not down on lower campus near the athletics department. They just made an appearance in the newly renovated Liberal Arts courtyards. Is this the beginning of yet another attempted shift toward a new design for the entire college?
We proudly boast about our diversity and wide variety of butt-kicking departments. Are we ready to cloak the entire school in sport-saturated branding?
A trashcan design is just the tip of the iceberg. Older recycling bins have a metal pyramid on top. Does this imply we were trying to move towards that as a logo? Perhaps, but nothing solid has come from that either. It only adds to the confusion that even something as simple as trashcans aren’t uniform.
A logo is how a corporation brands itself in the public eye. What kind of impression do we make if we can’t definitively say, “Yes, this is who we are.”
Rebranding an entire university can be a public relations nightmare, but we need to be unified under one look. Having so many logos and brands can be confusing for non-locals. If we are well-known for having a giant pyramid on campus, someone who sees the LB State logo might not connect that we are, in fact, the very same school and vise versa.
Granted, we must pick our battles, and a trashcan design might not be the strongest foot to start off on. But this is more than simply a trashcan. It’s another addition to the chaos that is the CSULB identity.
Why?