Campaign under way for UI logo
BOISE – To some, it’s a groovy throwback to the sunny ‘70s. To others, a textbook example of symmetrical design. But to most, it’s the instantly recognizable symbol of the University of Idaho.
The school’s “daisy” or “starburst” logo, an interlocking circle of five large yellow U’s linked by small I’s, as in “UI,” or University of Idaho, will soon start disappearing from the Moscow campus as part of an aggressive new marketing campaign.
It’s been erased from university letterhead and will eventually be painted over on the large mural outside the Kibbie Dome, the school’s indoor football arena.
The starburst icon light fixtures in the Student Union will stay, for now, but the relic of the “old” University of Idaho is being phased out, a casualty of a Madison Avenue-meets-Moscow image makeover.
Jonathan Gaffney, a University of Idaho senior who spearheaded a “Save the Starburst” campaign, said most students bristle at the school’s new promotional materials showing photographs of hikers on mountaintops and Birkenstock-wearing professors.
Selling the University of Idaho’s prairie setting as a Rocky Mountain paradise is “awkward,” Gaffney said, but his beef is with the school’s decision to scrap the 36-year-old starburst.
“It’s the one thing that screams U of I,” he said. “It’s a reminder of the U of I as a whole to so many people – of the four or five years you spent here, these great college years. It’s nostalgic.”
As of Thursday, more than 488 students, alumni and faculty members had signed Gaffney’s online petition. He will present it to the school’s president once he gets 500 signatures.
Gaffney is amazed how many students have signed the petition on the campus that is annually rated among the least politically active in the country by The Princeton Review.
“We don’t have protests or anything like that,” he said. “This isn’t something that usually happens here. Just having a petition is unusual in the first place and then the fact that it’s gotten this response.”
The icon goes by many names – starburst, sunburst, daisy, snowflake and in Generation Y lingo, “that U of I circle thing.”
The logo first appeared on the school’s 1970-71 staff directory, supplementing the traditional “Lady of Knowledge” seal of a woman stroking a harp and looking onto fields of grain, said university archivist Nathan Bender.
In the 36 years since its first appearance, the school has splattered the icon across the campus, if not the state, on billboards, classroom trash cans and tuition bills.
Sandra Haarsager, a University of Idaho professor of journalism and mass media, said the school is wrong to completely erase the type of immediately recognizable trademark that most colleges and corporations spend millions of dollars trying to invent.
“There is a real value in the kind of corporate identity we have with the starburst,” she said.
A new logo could take years to catch on, Haarsager said. While some schools are easily identified by their mascot, very few people associate the Vandal, a bushy bearded Viking, with Idaho.
But the marketers counter that the starburst has turned stale. The school is reeling from a 6 percent dip in enrollment, budget cuts and a scandal over a botched land deal in Boise. It needs a symbol that is modern, not retro, said Wendy Shattuck, the assistant vice president for marketing and strategic communications.
The new ad campaign, which also changes the old university slogan “From Here You Can Go Anywhere” to “Open Spaces. Open Minds,” uses bold font types that don’t match the 1970s print of the UI starburst.
“It was looking its age, yeah,” Shattuck said. “We’re also moving away from referring to ourselves as UI. That could be Iowa, Illinois, Indiana – we’re trying to stop abbreviating ourselves.”
Tara Roberts, editor in chief of the university newspaper, the Argonaut, thinks the marketing team miscalculated the pulse of the students.
A hip-hop version of the university fight song that school officials made available for download as a cell phone ringtone became a particular campus laughingstock, Roberts said.
“This schizophrenia has left people wondering what UI is trying to be during its mid-life crisis,” Roberts wrote in a recent editorial. She said the school should spend money on keeping students happy and updating academic programs, not on the fickle tinkerings of marketing.
“It’s funny, this branding campaign is trying to make us look more iconic, but it’s taking away the most recognizable icon to three generations of students,” she said. “It seems like such a trendy thing.”