Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Branding Simplicity: University of Illinois Consolidating Around The Block "I"

Branding Simplicity is part of Message Simplicity, an essential component of strategic simplicity®, which allows companies to have a competitive advantage in today's Attention Scarcity Age.

The University of Illinois recently recognized the value of branding simplicity when it announced that the university will retire the column "I" (in blue) and only use the block "I" (in orange):



The orange block "I" was first used in 1892 and has been a big part of athletics. But, since 1997, the U of I's nonathletic units have been using the blue column "I".

As Chancellor Robert J. Jones stated in the U of I alumni magazine: "The fact that the public is presented with multiple versions of a campus logo represents a significant problem and creates needless confusion."