I am not very good with graphic design, illustration, and anything that requires good visual instincts. So I don’t really regard myself as fit to have an opinion about this. However, a current debate at my school is between Old Logo:
And New Logo:
Opinions at the school seem to be divided; naturally, a Facebook protest page got formed, WCL: What A Crappy Logo. I don’t know – my Beloved Wife tells me I’m not the guy to pick out a snapshot and get the good one. So I thought I would ask you, although I know of course that this is a nearly irresistible invitation to put your game face on. (It also got picked up at Above the Law, but ATL does specialize in being snotty, so even if New Logo were the greatest in the world, it would come in for a bit of sneer.)
Dave N. says:
Obviously I have no stake in the outcome, but I like the older one. The new one looks rather busy (and people in place of pillars is too clever by half).
January 20, 2010, 9:40 pmsbw says:
Goodness! Not the top one. The eye has nothing to focus on.
The problem with any logo here is that you really need two: One for each entity. Hard to merge them.
January 20, 2010, 9:42 pmBill says:
I like the trend of logos becoming cleaner and less complex. The original one was better but that yellow bar through the middle just doesn’t look right (the lack of symmetry, maybe?). It would have been nicer if they cleaned up / simplified the old one.
January 20, 2010, 9:42 pmGerbilsbite says:
Count me in for the new one. It actually identifies the entity in question (like a logo ought to) and doesn’t look like a generic windshield sticker.
January 20, 2010, 9:44 pmAdelle says:
Personally, I think the old logo is far more attractive. It has a classic styling to it, while the new logo has this bizarre bunch of multi-colored people holding up a courthouse. Is this a statement about the school’s diversity? The new one is going to look really lousy on a bumper sticker or a sweatshirt, too.
January 20, 2010, 9:44 pmMike McDougal says:
The new one with the multicolored people-pillars is ridiculous.
January 20, 2010, 9:46 pmJohn D says:
The new one is busy, but the old one is just awful. The big letters struck out by the bar might work if they were the school’s initials (WCL), but “LAW”? Are they suggesting that prospective students are too stupid to figure out that it’s a law school or too blind to read the smaller text with the school’s name?
The new logo makes it clear that the main institution is American University (which got lost on the old logo). The only change I would make is to put a small rule between “American University” and “Washington College of Law.”
January 20, 2010, 9:50 pmOrin Kerr says:
The new one is just terrible, I think. Although the old one looks kind of like GW’s.
January 20, 2010, 9:52 pmBen says:
Neither are good, but the new old one isnt nearly as bad as the new one.
January 20, 2010, 9:56 pmCiarandDenlane says:
I agree with Ben.
January 20, 2010, 9:57 pmCraig Oren says:
I lack any expertise in the visual arts. That said, I prefer the new logo because it mentions American University, whereas the old logo buried that. And isn’t it important what insitution Washington College of Law is part of?
January 20, 2010, 9:58 pmSteve says:
Both of them kinda suck. The old one looks like someone slapped a little sticker on top of a big sticker.
January 20, 2010, 10:01 pmPragmaticist says:
The older one is awful as it’s very irritating to look at, because the word “LAW” is obscured. The new one is better, but still not good.
January 20, 2010, 10:06 pmBaseballhead says:
As a graphic designer, I will only volunteer this: it’s time for a new logo to replace your new logo.
January 20, 2010, 10:07 pmyankee says:
The new one is just horrendous. There’s no excuse for alternating between four different fonts in a single phrase. The two sans serif lines are in a different fonts. The serif lines are in the same font (I think), but they’re in different sizes and the letters are further apart on the bottom line because of the full justification. The serif lines alternate with the sans serifs. The result is that you keep switching from font to font, and it looks terrible. (And that’s before we get to the absurd icon.)
The giant “LAW” in the old logo is kind of stupid, but the overall look is much cleaner.
January 20, 2010, 10:08 pmRandy says:
Both are bad. The old one looks like
LAW, which means it’s negating itself. The second is visually too busy.The real problem, of course, it the name. American University Washington College of Law? Sounds like two law schools merged in the past and they had to keep both names. Is the Washington really necessary? I mean, the guy has already been honored with a city and countless other institutions. Stripping this one of his name will hardly put a dent in his reputation.
January 20, 2010, 10:11 pmBarbara Skolaut says:
Nothing personal, Kenneth, but they both suck.
Still, if forced to pick one, I’d pick the top one (old one). The new one is too forced and PC with what appear to be different colors of people. Puh-leeze.
January 20, 2010, 10:14 pmKenneth Anderson says:
Don’t worry, I take no offense, they might both be terrible.
January 20, 2010, 10:20 pmAdam says:
Sorry to be “this guy,” but I really don’t like either; though if I had to pick, I’d pick the new logo. The old one suffers from a distracting yellow bar right through the center of the design. The new one suffers from a conglomeration of serif and sans-serif text, as well as a multicultural “pillar array,” that raises more questions than it answers. Still, I think my eye is less distracted by the new logo (due to the awful bar running through the old one), so I vote for the new.
January 20, 2010, 10:23 pmwolfefan says:
The font mixing on the new one makes it look a mess, but that shouldn’t be too hard to fix. I am probably the only one, but I kind of like the people/pillars. I like the little burst of color, and if my monitor is displaying it correctly some of the people are green! Some commenters may think the multi-colored people are some sort of a nod to diversity, but including green people is a salute to all those folks who say, “I don’t care about anyone’s color – white, black, red, yellow, or even green.” It captures the sensitivities of the PC and the non-PC all at once! :)
January 20, 2010, 10:28 pmbyomtov says:
Both are bad, for the various reasons already given by others. The American University name should be way more prominent than “Washington College of
Musical KnowledgeLaw.The new one would be better if you:
Changed the people-pillars to pillars.
Used a consistent font.
Made the university name bigger than the school name. Do this by putting “American University” on the bottom.
January 20, 2010, 10:32 pmRobert Ayers says:
I give the bottom one a B- and the top one an F.
January 20, 2010, 10:37 pmHoward says:
Someone should look at a book about logos. I believe both of these violate most of the “rules”.
On the new one, the size of the letters for AU and WCL are too similar.
Send the designers back to the drawing board – make a choice which should be bigger – AU or WCL. It looks like they made them roughly the same just to make room for the court with the “people columns”. If they’re wedded to the people columns graphic, figure out another way to place it – either as background to the larger words, or between the first set and second set of words in a more square-shaped logo, or off to the left with WCL in bigger letters on two lines and AU all in one smaller line (or vice versa).
I’d also re-draw the “people column” thing to look more like a court and less like a tent, again, assuming they are wedded to it.
What they’ve given you so far is a mess.
^^ WASHINGTON
IIIIII COLLEGE OF LAW
^^ AMERICAN
IIIIII UNIVERSITY
in either case above, under the bigger words would be the other set of words smaller and on one line
January 20, 2010, 10:39 pmptt says:
What diversity? That’s the rainbow flag. Must be a gay law school.
More seriously, I agree with many above. They both suck.
If you ignore what they actually say, I prefer the top one. The bottom looks, well, fuddy duddy, like a throwback to logos before they got snappy.
The biggest problem with both of them is what they actually say and the fonts they use to say it. The top reads to me as American College of Law LAW. And the bottom — if you give weight to the fonts — reads American Washington University College of Law
Did someone actually get paid for designing the second one?
January 20, 2010, 10:55 pmJimmyL says:
The new logo is definitely worse. Not even debatable. (I have no affiliation with American WCL.)
January 20, 2010, 11:01 pmll says:
Tell the truth, a Junior High School student did the new logo.
January 20, 2010, 11:11 pmBill Poser says:
For what its worth, I find the old logo more attractive but the new logo much easier to read, so the choice depends on whether the purpose is a pretty graphic or something that readily identifies the school to someone not already familiar with the logo.
January 20, 2010, 11:14 pmRikiTiki says:
The new one looks like a logo for an elementary school, not a law school. Terrible. The old one is much better (though as many have said, still terrible just like the name of the law school – drop the Washington). Doesn’t W&M have a different name for their law school, but I never see anyone refer to it as the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at William and Mary.
Drop the Washington and just call it American University School of Law.
January 20, 2010, 11:20 pmD.R.M. says:
They’re both terrible. Really, really terrible.
Now, the logo in the upper left corner here isn’t nearly as bad as either, even though it is a definite relative of the second one above We can argue whether the multi-hued silhouette pillars are really a good idea, but we neither have the font chaos of the second or the negating bar of the first, and the courthouse does say “law”.
For a “squarer” logo, you then have two choices. You can put a larger version of the colored-silhouette courthouse centered above the two lines of text, or you can put a larger version of the colored-silhouette courthouse centered in place of the horizontal line separating the two lines of text. You do not do anything like the second, with the mixed fonts and different-length lines.
January 20, 2010, 11:21 pmchiMaxx says:
Neither is really good, but the new one just looks amateur–clip art and a mixture of fonts that makes me want to read “American Washington University College of Law” (the stronger nonserif font followed by the lighter serif font). At least the old logo got the two names to stick together by putting each on its own line. Really, all that would be needed to fix the old one would be to change the large “LAW” to “WCL”
January 20, 2010, 11:26 pmShelby says:
Old one: really crappy.
New one: merely annoying.
January 20, 2010, 11:41 pmAndrew says:
They both suck. The new one sucks less.
As a fan of heraldry, what American University should do is get a proper coat of arms from the American College of Heraldry, or from the College of Arms in London. Then use the main arms to develop subsidiary arms for the Washington College of Law. However most institutions in the United States don’t care about heraldry.
It’s cheaper to have the college president’s 8-year-old do it using MS Paint…
January 20, 2010, 11:59 pmleo marvin says:
I’d expect the new one from an internet correspondence school. The old one at least has a stodginess that says the school wants to be taken seriously.
January 21, 2010, 12:01 amRandom_Physicist says:
I would presume that the most important thing for a law school logo is to look dignified. Even is the text doesn’t make sense on the old one, at least it looks dignified (although not choosing to center the yellowish bar puzzles me).
I think changing the text in the background to WCL would be weird because then you’d have the full phrase written out with its initials behind it. The two things that stand out (the text in a big font and the text in the brighter colored box) both give the same information. Instead if the box read “American University” and the bottom said “Washington College of Law” the two most noticeable things would be your institution and the field, with the specific name of the college at the bottom for more information.
January 21, 2010, 12:03 amSkyler says:
The old one is a bit weak, but has some kind of dignity.
The new one has cartoon characters. This is hardly the image one would expect of John Houseman. Who would hire a lawyer that looks like a cartoon character?
Actually, they aren’t even as dignified as a cartoon character. They remind me of the little townspeople on eWorld — little hopey changey symbols of happiness and conformity in different colors.
Yuck.
January 21, 2010, 12:10 amSkyler says:
Wolfefan wrote:
In the Marine Corps, for the nearly 30 years I’ve been around it, we’ve always referred to each other in this way to avoid overt racism. All Marines are just Marines, but when you’re trying to point someone out across the drill field you would say, “No, not the light green Marine, I’m talking about the dark green one over there.” Maybe not the most elegant practice, but it is what it is.
January 21, 2010, 12:17 amChris Travers says:
The new logo is poorly designed. In particular it looks busy and demonstrates poor use of space. The old logo is simple and straight-forward.
I have to join the critics. What a crappy logo!
January 21, 2010, 12:23 amLyric Critic says:
They’re both poor, but the new one is awful.
January 21, 2010, 12:34 amVisitor Again says:
They’re both terrible, but the new one is much worse. It looks as if it has been deliberately designed to repel.
I have no artistic skills and no experience in graphics, but I’m quite confident that in an hour or two I could come up with a much more attractive logo. And I’m confident that 99 percent of the population of this country that has reached high school age could come up with a much better one.
January 21, 2010, 12:50 amChrisTS says:
I seem to be in the majority: neither is very good, but the new one is busy and the strike out (?) in the old one is confusing.
I have no objection to the people-pillars, and I think those who reading this as a political message are over-reading.
To me, the central question is what the essence of the logo is supposed to be. One wants to flag the LAW school, I would think, while noting the broader institutional context (AU). The new one does not do this (and, yes, the multiple fonts are sophomoric); the old one barely situates the law school at all.
And to think that someone is getting paid LOTS of money for this.
January 21, 2010, 12:51 amD says:
I’m sure the underrepresented purple people demographic as depicted in the new logo are thrilled to have this much publicity. It is like the law school is calling out to the purple people: “hey, you are people too! And, we accept you with open arms and hearts. Please apply.”
January 21, 2010, 12:59 amChrisTS says:
Perhaps the logo designers were trying to indicate the diverse people practicing in/affected by ‘Law.’ Or, perhaps they thought the logo needed more color. Or, perhaps they thought no one would notice that the pillars were people if all the pillars were white. Or, perhaps, they thought all these things.
Who cares, and why assume only the first possibility?
January 21, 2010, 1:29 amJeff Walden says:
I’m not sure I really like either. The fonts in the old one command respect — but really, splashing the name across the largest of that text? That blunts its impact for very little reason. The new one’s fonts have no impact, and the building at an angle for some reason feels tacky to me. Maybe it’s the lack of clean lines to contribute resilience of structure that does it. I think the old logo makes a good starting point, and it’s maybe where I’d lean if I only had the two options, but I wouldn’t stick with it if I could help it.
January 21, 2010, 2:17 amGulf Coast Bandit says:
As a prospective law student, they’re both miserable.
January 21, 2010, 2:29 amOld Logo: What the heck is that bar doing running across the logo?!?! Otherwise, that one wouldn’t be half bad.
New Logo: Too much information. I don’t mind the people pillars, but it needs to all go to one font.
Michael Lockyear says:
The new one seems bit “clip-arty”. The old one is not perfect either…the big obscured “law” seems a bit unnecessary.
January 21, 2010, 3:28 amLarryA says:
What I get out of the graphic on the bottom logo is, “We’re going to take all these diverse people, whip them into formation, and grind them all to the same height.”
But then I write fiction, not law.
January 21, 2010, 3:29 amJim Hu says:
Another vote for both are terrible.
I find the new one uglier, but the point about the unintended strikeout is on valid. As others have noted, the new one has too many colors and fonts. I don’t think others have noted that the people as pillars looks like they’re being crushed by a pyramid. Also, I hate the extra light strip at the bottom.
I hear you can get students at design schools to design attractive logos for very reasonable fees.
January 21, 2010, 3:36 amJim Hu says:
The impressive thing about how ugly this is that it would be improved by being in Comic Sans
January 21, 2010, 3:42 amBenjamin Morris says:
Having never heard of the American Washington University College of Law (or whatever it’s called), I found the second one to be confusing.
January 21, 2010, 4:47 amMike G in Corvallis says:
Randy just saved me the trouble of composing an original comment — he absolutely nailed it.
January 21, 2010, 7:07 ammarkm says:
If there was an IgNobel prize for art, the award would go to the inventor of rainbow people pillars, for a design that appears hackneyed the very first time one sees it.
And the mixed fonts – ugh. A font change, if used at all, should separate distinct blocks of text. These changes split up the text that should be associated together, “American University” and “Washington College of Law”. (I assume.)
Not that the old one is any winner, either.
January 21, 2010, 7:23 amDavid Bernstein says:
They are both terrible, in different ways. As a professor at a competitor school, I say merge them!
January 21, 2010, 7:40 amFrank G says:
I’m a WCL alum. I like the idea of a new logo because the old one is so generic, but I think this new one is too “cute” to represent a law school.
January 21, 2010, 8:09 amliamascorcaigh says:
Looking at both logos, I’d reply like the Kerryman when asked for directions by a visiting Yank, “Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here at all!”
January 21, 2010, 8:13 amMarkRockwell says:
We had this great debate at Case Western Reserve over the last few years. It was utterly inane.
The old logo was bland and stodgy. So they hired it out, built a new logo. The new logo, it was quickly pointed out, resembled a fat man carrying a surf board. Oops. That kinda pissed off the older alumni. And older alumni in Cleveland–in stark contrast to everyone else–have stacks of cash. So the new logo was dead on arrival. What to do? Redesign the old logo; same logo, less stodge. Everyone wins. Everyone loses too.
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January 21, 2010, 8:20 amXanthippas says:
What was wrong with the old logo?
January 21, 2010, 8:21 amrbj says:
I don’t like the new one, but the old one looks like one of those “no” or “ban” signs with the WCL banning Law.
Time for a third option.
January 21, 2010, 8:23 amGeorge says:
Both logos should be in a textbook on why committees should should never be allowed to do graphic arts. (see, e.g., all the new U.S. state-themed quarters).
I get the obvious diversity shtick in the many colors holding up the building but why an oppressive Greco-Roman circus tent? Why not a tepee or minaret? And does AU really admit blue and green people? Fictional races is about as diverse as it gets.
January 21, 2010, 8:30 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Nothing new about people-pillars, the Greeks used ‘em. Although caryatids were all female.
The Brit practice is to emphasize the college over the university (‘Smith’ goes to “Balliol,” not “Oxford”), so on the theory that in the American Academy, Anglophilia is always to be preferred, I have to favor the old logo. But isn’t that gigantic “LAW” blazoned across it a little, um, crass?
January 21, 2010, 8:41 amgracchus says:
The old Logo is too busy, but it has a touch of gravitas. The new one looks like logo for a kindergarden
January 21, 2010, 9:00 amDJR says:
The old logo is offensive because it looks like Law is being crossed out, it’s not clear in what order one is supposed to read the words, and the order that makes most sense is the least intuitive (American University/Washington College of Law/LAW).
The new logo is bizarre. First, why is Washington in the biggest font? Is “Washington,” arguably the least informative word, really what they want to emphasize? Second, why alternate between serif and sans serif and even if you were going to do that, why change the font in the middle of a single phrase? Third, why those two fonts? Neither is necessarily offensive by itself, but combining them gives you the feel of a font called comic sans, not the sort of dignity that you expect in a law school.
On the “logo,” I see that it sort of looks like the Supreme Court, and that the people who are the pillars are multi-colored. I take it the message is ham-handedly trying to convey an “Equal Justice Under the Law” message, perhaps with a little diversity thrown in. But the logo is a failure of both design and execution. First, the color array again does not befit a law school. Second, if the people are holding up the courthouse, they cannot leave and therefore are prisoners, else the courthouse fall. Third, either the people are giants or the courthouse is only six feet tall or so. Either way, they’re going to have to duck to walk around that courthouse or else bump their head a lot. Also, the building is only two people deep, so what could possibly happen inside, if there is an inside. Fourth, what no diversity for fat or short people? What about the handicapped who cannot hold up a building? No equal justice for them?
Overall, the commenter who noted that the new logo looks like an elementary school’s logo was correct, though after looking through several pages of results for my google images search for “elementary school logo,” I was unable to find one as bad as this.
January 21, 2010, 9:03 amHans Clapton says:
The new one says to me,
“The Roof of the Law Knows Not Bias and Will Collapse Upon and Crush All Without Discrimination”
or,
“This Is How Trap Our Diverse Student Bodys Parents to Pick Their Pockets for Tuition”.
January 21, 2010, 9:12 amKevin R says:
Not since the one-eyed, one-horned, giant purple-people eater has the plight of the purple people been so recognized!
The old one is definitely better, but still isn’t that great. The giant “LAW” is pretty silly. (My wife is a WCL alumna; I am not a lawyer nor a graphic designer.)
January 21, 2010, 9:21 amHans Clapton says:
A thousand pardons-
January 21, 2010, 9:21 amAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Having done a tad bit of marketing in my time, the rule is don’t change the logo unless two things are true.
1. There has been some very significant change in the product that a logo change symbolizes. Otherwise you come across as putting lipstick on a pig or focusing on cosmetics rather than real improvement.
2. The new logo should be cleaner and easier to recognize at a greater distance than the old. See Pepsi, see Coke. The “new” logo is terrible as a logo, way too much reading required. It is worse than the old. However, it would be fine as a bumper sticker or parking permit sticker.
My free advice (you know what that’s worth) would be to move the center stripe of the old logo (W. C. of L.) to the bottom. That would make LAW really stand out, which is what you want to get across to the target audience.
January 21, 2010, 9:34 amJust Dropping By says:
I’ve known plenty of working attorneys who were caricatures.
January 21, 2010, 9:41 amArchitect says:
as a designer, the old one is better.
January 21, 2010, 9:59 amDavid says:
First I would figure out whether you are talking about the Washington College of Law…at American University, or whether you are talking about American University’s law school. This will help you decide which elements should be in a larger font. I agree with the other users about sticking with as few fonts as possible, and not changing the spacing or kerning within font choices unless you have to.
One other point that has not been brought up is looking at how the multi-color people building would come out when printed in a single or two color design, which you would use on letterhead, or printed materials for the students. I don’t think the new logo would fare very well in that situation, since it has too many specific colors on the people, and they would not shift to greyscale well.
January 21, 2010, 10:04 amAndy Bolen says:
The old one is lame/busy but the new one is awful. Clean up the old one.
January 21, 2010, 10:33 ameschapp says:
The new logo just doesn’t look professional. What is with the different font sizes and types?
I’m no fan of the original logo, but I was hoping an update would improve the branding not make WCL the butt of jokes.
January 21, 2010, 10:33 amBama 1L says:
Neither is great, but the new logo is horrible. It looks cheap and makes me wonder if the school is any good.
I don’t understand the alternation of fonts. I would think that, if you wanted to use two fonts, you would put “American University” in one and “Washington College of Law” in the other. I read the current one as “American Washington” and “University College of Law.” That sounds like an online school.
I don’t know why you want to emphasize the law school’s name; isn’t everyone who hires a consultant and does market research finding that the brand to emphasize is the university’s and not the law school’s? So it’s William & Mary, not Marshall-Wythe, etc.
Maybe you need “Washington” somewhere on the logo to emphasize that the law school is in Washington, D.C., which has got to be a draw factor. That’s probably a good idea, but relying on the school’s name to do this is confusing.
January 21, 2010, 10:38 amjohn smith says:
Frankly, the new logo looks like a cheeseburger. LOLcats?
January 21, 2010, 10:47 amKLT says:
The new logo is horrible.
January 21, 2010, 11:43 amzuch says:
Prof. Anderson:
The old logo sucks. It looks like a big “No law!” sign.
Cheers,
January 21, 2010, 11:51 amdevil's advocate says:
The mixed fonts in the new one are horrible. The feel is colloquial and not professional. And even if this about diversity, did they just see Wicked or why is one of the people green. environmental whackos everywhere will sleep soundly tonite that WCL will defending the climategaters.
I agree with the folks who said you shouldn’t be embarrassed of the schools initials alone. If you want to emphasize it is a law school or that it is part of the American University I’d try to take graphic advantage of the WCL or WCLAW. I sent you some doodlings cause I can’t figure how to post them as an Avatar. Guess I haven’t the movie. . .
January 21, 2010, 11:51 amDarel Finkbeiner says:
Second one blows, unless you are promoting a kindergarten.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I plan on becoming one.
However, if I were perusing among a shortened list of possible schools, and one of those schools had on their material or webpages that second logo – it would immediately be dropped off my list of possibilities. It looks childish. If I was wanting to attend a school to get an Early Childhood Education degree, it would be appropriate. Otherwise, no.
January 21, 2010, 12:13 pmCan't find a good name says:
Neither logo is good.
However, in the old logo, I would say that at least the font used for the word “Law” and “Washington College of Law” are attractive. (The “American University” in the old logo is too small to even notice.) The faults of the old logo are that the word “Law” is much larger than anything identifying the school, and the law school’s generic-sounding name is much larger than the name of the university.
The fonts used in the new logo do not work well at all. There is really nothing worthwhile in the new logo.
January 21, 2010, 12:35 pmBob N. says:
to put it bluntly, both are horrible. To understand why, read any introductory book on design. (E.g., note the cacophony of fonts on the second logo, to say nothing of the ridiculous icon. Note the meaningless and ugly strike-through stripe on the first one. The list goes on)
The advice would be as usual — seek professional help.
January 21, 2010, 1:24 pmGSM says:
The new logo is embarrasingly poor. I hope the law school didn’t pay someone to make that.
I know these things are all a matter of personal taste, but I can’t imagine that logo garnering much positive feedback from alumni. Moreover, I would definitely run it by alums because they do get pissed about these types of things.
For example back in 2002 my undergraduate institution had a logo change that ticked the alumni off to the point where the alums created a webpage (now dead) called SaveTheLogo.com, and ultimately got the university to reverse course with a bunch of egg on their face.
See Internet archive here
Tread carefully WCL/American U.
January 21, 2010, 1:31 pmGSM says:
Oh yeah, I forgot that it got some media attention at the time in a story in The Allentown Morning Call, December 13, 2001, page B1.
The last thing I think a Dean would want are ticked off alumni bashing their school in the paper…
January 21, 2010, 1:36 pmTitus says:
It’s pretty crappy. It looks like it the logo for some 80′s PSA. I agree that the prior one wasn’t fantastic, but this is just schlock.
January 21, 2010, 1:36 pmHans Clapton says:
*sigh*…
PC censorship has headed it’s ugly rear.
January 21, 2010, 1:39 pmptt says:
In defense of the new design on the basis of tradition, the Elgin Marbles — the world’s most famous people-pillars — were painted…
January 21, 2010, 2:29 pmBrooks Lyman says:
The old one is better from an aesthetic standpoint; the new one has little artistic merit, but gets the message across better.
Since logos are not usually the only identifying thing on a sign or letterhead (many of them are more symbolic that literate) but simply are an identifying mark, the message isn’t all that important.
January 21, 2010, 3:16 pmRandy says:
Frank: “I think this new one is too “cute” to represent a law school.”
Or perhaps not cute enough? Research shows that people love ads with dogs in them. (Think of those cute little golden retrievers in every DirtDevil commercial — who *wouldn’t* love to clean up after those puppies?)
I say, add a few puppies, and maybe some flowers (symbolic of peace, no?) and watch those applications pile up!
January 21, 2010, 5:14 pmRich says:
Both are bad, but the new one is worse.
January 21, 2010, 5:16 pmAnonsters says:
For what it’s worth, Kenneth Anderson has sort of misjudged the reaction of the school community to the new logo. Virtually everyone thinks it’s a steaming pile of (cartoonish) dung. I have yet to encounter a single student who thinks we should keep it.
On the other hand, yes, the old one does suck.
January 21, 2010, 5:17 pmGlenn Bowen says:
I just donated to PBS as a conditioned response.
January 21, 2010, 6:29 pmChrisTS says:
Did the school not get professional help with the ‘new’ one? If not, I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse about the result.
January 21, 2010, 6:34 pmWCLstudent says:
I’m not sure who Prof. Anderson has been speaking with, but almost everyone at WCL is offended by the new logo. There are a handful of people who like it, but the overwhelming majority absolutely detest it and think it is embarrassing, undignified, childish and not representative of the school. Many think it looks like a logo for a juvenile justice charter school. It’s gotten to be quite the scandal, but at least the dean has been receptive to the community outcry and is reconsidering the logo and working on a redesign.
January 21, 2010, 11:20 pmPortia says:
Would it be too much to hope that the Dean himself is not “working on a redesign”?
January 21, 2010, 11:42 pmRandy says:
Let’s see what the school mascot looks like.
January 22, 2010, 12:04 amWCLstudent says:
Portia, I meant, of course, not that the dean himself will do the redesign, but that he is meeting with students and administrators to see what can be done to redesign the logo. That’s a good thing. He’s hearing the outcry and doing something about it. Check out the Facebook group. There’s info on next steps there.
January 22, 2010, 12:32 ammarkm says:
In all the colors of the rainbow, plus purple???
More significantly, caryatids were individually carved statues that also served as pillars, not copy-and-pasted geometric shapes.
January 22, 2010, 6:43 amGary Indiana says:
Why are there only two brownish people-pillars? And why do they appear to be doing most of the heavy lifting?
January 23, 2010, 9:19 amMariana says:
@anyone who likes the new logo –
Do you go to WCL? You might feel differently about it if it was the symbol representing your workplace or alma mater.
The new logo also does a disservice to any students hoping to pursue a career in something other than human rights (e.g., they hope to practice real law). Would I want to hire a commercial lawyer who had THAT on their business cards?* Hell no. It just looks silly.
I get that this school wants to present itself as the “public interest” option in D.C., but doesn’t the school already crap on its Business Law students enough?
The old logo wasn’t exactly high art, but it was much more professional looking.
*One more reason for WCL students to print their own business cards. The school’s cards are over-priced & super ugly.
January 24, 2010, 9:31 pmGGLammi says:
As a WCL grad, I am actually bothered less by the logo change (though it does look childish) than the “Champion What Matters” campaign that lies behind it. It should instead be called “Champion What We Say Matters”, especially when you see the graphic representation of this campaign at http://www.wcl.american.edu/secle/founders/2010/. For the most part I received a quality legal education at WCL, but far too often, teachers were more interested in inculcating students into a way of thinking about the law and its purposes than allowing students to reach their own conclusions. Through the school leadership’s myopic view of “social justice” or “public interest”, I am sadly sure that the work I have chose to devote my career to — championing economic liberties, personal responsibility, and a limited role for the Third Branch — would be found not to matter.
February 1, 2010, 5:55 pm