Members of NIU’s Marketing and Branding Committee need your help to choose a new logo for the university.

The 2011-12 academic year will begin this fall with a new tagline – “Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow” – and a new logo that conveys a unified and consistent institutional visual identity.

First, though, results from a brief online survey open now will assist campus leaders in selecting the best design from the final two contenders.

The online survey will remain open for comments and suggestions through at least the week of June 13, when summer classes begin.

Stakeholder feedback is only being solicited on the primary graphic element of each logo. Both meet several guidelines that emerged during the development process this spring.

• First, the NIU Huskies athletic logo seems to be universally well-liked and admired for its clarity, design simplicity and overall graphic appeal. Therefore, the university’s logo should reflect some of these aesthetic design qualities. 
• Second, the university’s logo should be architecturally based around NIU’s signature campus building, Altgeld Hall.
• Third, the new logo design should not be too intricate because it will be used across all mediums, including electronic and online formats.
• Finally, the logo must retain its visual appeal in one-color use and should be able to easily incorporate sub-branding for colleges and departments.

The logo development process was open to all graphic designers on campus. The designers group created and reviewed more than 75 logo concepts and forwarded the top 25 to the Marketing and Branding Committee for further consideration.

At the same time, the committee engaged the services of an external design consultant to bring additional perspective to the logo concept development process.

Once the logo redesign process is brought to a successful completion this summer, the graphic designers group will explore sub-branding and typography options.

The new logo will replace the last official logo (the “Centennial Logo”) as well as the NIU Wordmark.

This process does not affect the Huskie Athletics logo or the Presidential Seal, which is reserved for use on materials related to the Office of the President, Board of Trustees, or university documents of a formal and official nature, such as diplomas, certificates and transcripts).