Knowing Who You Are and Showing Who You Are: Planning Your Visual Identity

Image and Identity

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, it is important to distinguish between the terms "identity" and "image." Clive Chajet, author of Image By Design: from Corporate Vision to Business Reality defines them as follows:

"A corporation's image is what is perceived by its various audiences -- how it appears to outsiders...."

"A corporations identity is what it chooses to use to shape those perceptions."

Image and Reality

Image comes from outside. It isn't what you want people to think of you; it is what people think of you. It is a fact -- not how you wish to be seen but how you are seen. Often corporations or institutions who are not happy with their images say they have an "image problem" when in fact they have a reality problem which they would rather not acknowledge. Their image does not correspond to the way they would like to be perceived, and it seems easier to fix the image than to deal with the reality.

Obviously, a visual identity program built on such a foundation is doomed to fail unless the real reasons for the image problems are addressed in a serious manner. Too often, the statement "We need a new logo" is the symptom of some deeper and more troubling problem.

A Real Image Problem

An institution has a real image problem when it determines that its image does not (in a positive direction) accurately reflect the reality of the institution. For example:

These are situations where a visual identity program in the context of an overall marketing plan can be effective in helping to change the image.

Plan First, Design Later

Creating a visual identity is not a trivial undertaking. If it is approached as a purely visual/aesthetic problem, it will probably fail. Either it will be a victim of conflicting taste and never get off the drawing board, or it will not be an effective expression of the culture and values of the institution. A sound operating procedure can be outlined as follows:

Support

The need for the program must be supported by the president and chairman of the board of trustees. They must understand that the development of a visual identity program is often a painful process (not unlike psychoanalysis), but the results can be worth it if it is done properly. The leadership should also establish financial support for the program, both for development and for implementation.

Establishing Criteria

The president should establish a visual identity committee that includes representatives from the offices of public relations, publications, admissions, development, continuing education, and alumni relations, at least one student, and possibly a trustee and an alumnus. The committee is responsible for developing design criteria based on the institution mission statement, the available marketing data, and their own perceptions of the institution. The criteria should be a list of specific properties that the visual identity should express. They should be debated if necessary until a consensus is reached, and then they should be approved by the president and chairman of the the board of trustees. This may seem tedious, but it will save agony in the long run.

Design

The design process should begin only after verbal criteria have been established and agreed upon. The number of options and presentations to the committee will be a function of the development budget and schedule, but normally the designers present several rough directions at a first meeting, and a direction is established. At a second meeting, the designers present variations on the selected direction, and the choices are narrowed further. If one or more designs can be agreed upon at this meeting, they are refined further and sample applications are presented at a third meeting.

At each stage of the process, the designs presented should be measured only against the design criteria. Opinions that are a matter of taste should be voiced, but they should not be decisive, particularly in the early stages of development.

Building Consensus

Even if you've managed the first three parts of the process well, this part is tricky. You want to get feedback from as many people as possible about the design, but you also want to keep the identity from being design-by-committee or from getting bogged down. There is no rule of thumb about who should or should not be included in the review at this stage, but you should not exclude anyone capable of sinking the program. The presenter should review the criteria with the reviewers before presenting the designs. He or she should make it clear that the design will be reworked only if there are serious objections to the criteria or the way the designs meet those criteria.

Implementation

In an ideal world, the same designer or design team who developed the identity will design all or part of the applications of the identity. Usually this is impractical, so the designer develops a standards manual to govern the core elements of the program. It takes a while to work out the kinks of most identity programs, so it is best to wait for a year or so after launch to develop the manual.

I know this may sound like an enormous project, possibly beyond the political or financial resources of your institution. If you plan the process carefully, however, it may be more manageable than you think.

Rather than looking for a comprehensive institution-wide identity, you might break it down into components. One of the biggest problems in designing identity programs for educational institutions is that they address such a diverse audience: high school students, counselors, parents, academics, media, businesses, the community, etc. for so many different purposes. On the one hand, it seems absurd that a publication for the college of business should look like a publication for the school of performing arts; on the other, both programs might benefit from being clearly associated with your particular university.

The key to resolving this diversity-within-identity problem is to establish a core identity that can govern the development of various sub-identities for different constituencies. The core identity embodies the primary values of the institution, while the sub-identities can address their specific audiences as long as they are not inconsistent with the core identity.

Certain elements will be very closely aligned with the core identity: stationery, business cards, administrative forms, campus directional signs. Other elements will have their own identities adapted to their own purposes: student recruiting publications and videos, advertising formats for recruiting, advertising formats for personnel hiring, development and capital campaign materials, premiums (mugs, T-shirts, book bags, etc.), but all should be consistent with the core identity.

So what defines a core identity? A symbol or logotype can be a useful way of embodying the values of your institution. It is, however, only one rather small component of your visual expression, and by itself it is not enough to define a visual identity. In printed publications, for example, paper stock, color, format, photography, illustration, typography, and layout all are far more important expressions of your institution than the logotype on the cover. The attitude toward all these elements should be governed by the core identity. And that identity, if it is to be effective, must reflect the real institution.

One of the advantages of having defined a core identity is that you don't have to do everything at once. In the process of defining the core identity, you can establish a plan for implementation over a period of time, say two to five years.

Bibliography

Clive Chajet and Tom Shachtman, Image By Design: from Corporate Vision to Business Reality, Addison-Wesley, 1991

Wally Olins, Corporate Identity: Making Business Strategy Visible through Design, Harvard Business School Press, 1990

Will Linthicum, The Politics of Visual Identity, Currents, vol. XVII, no. 6, June 1991