UH gives up logo hunt
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
After 18 months, $151,000, two search processes, endless meetings and hundreds of hours in a quest for a new unifying symbol, officials have decided to keep the University of Hawai'i's decades-old seal as its universal image and modernize it with some new typography.
None of six proposed logos that had been considered for the university "resonated" with the 15-member committee asked to make a decision, acting president David McClain announced yesterday.
"This is a project that was worth doing, and was worth doing twice," McClain said, "but at this point we need to put it on the back burner and focus on properly financing the university going forward."
McClain's decision to keep the university's traditional-looking seal ends a search that began in late 2002 but yielded little that the community could unite behind — except opposition.
Committee chairman Francis Oda said none of the six competing logos met even half of the requirements called for in the committee's selection guidelines. He also said the logos were too generic and insufficiently artistic to be the mark for the university for decades into the future.
While McClain assigned no blame for the failure to come up with a new "brand" for the university, designer Clarence Lee, who heads one of three firms that produced two of the six competing logos, criticized the decision to allow public input on the selection.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
"That's the dumbest thing," Lee said. "Never in my entire career have I ever asked the public for their input, because everybody has an ego, and when you ask for their opinion for something as subjective as a symbol they will try to come up with something that makes them look wise or insightful. It's human nature. I would not ask a student in the school of medicine to do surgery on me."
University of Hawai'i Acting President David McClain and Francis Oda, head of the logo search committee, announced that the six latest logo submissions had been rejected and the school would use its existing school seal.
The university gave the public a week to vote online for their favorite among the six logos, and received 660 e-mails. Forty-nine percent of the votes were for "none of the above."
Public "comments were distributed to all committee members, and they had those to use to form their opinion," said Phil Kinnicutt, UH director of marketing and brand management.
Public comments also played a role in the first effort last year. With 60 percent of 1,300 e-mails running against the two logos suggested, then-president Evan Dobelle yanked both. Much of the criticism then pointed to the fact that the logos had been designed by a Maryland firm.
Lee praised the university's decision, noting that when the first logo search began in 2002, he had suggested keeping the seal but modernizing it, as he had done for the logos of Iolani, Punahou and Kamehameha Schools.
"It's so ironic. That's what I told them in the beginning. I suggested they clean up the seal. But they had an agenda. Dobelle wanted to be in charge and do this ambitious marketing program to bring the campuses together, and they were set on the course to get a new symbol.
"All you want from a symbol is something strong, recognizable and is a clear vehicle for imparting the message of the institution."
That is exactly what the seal does, Lee said.
Costs for a search lasting more than 18 months to find a new University of Hawai'i logo include: • $74,000 paid to the Baltimore firm of Robert Rytter and Associates, which won the first contract. • $62,000 paid to the Hawai'i Brand Strategy Group to come up with a brand statement. • $5,000 to each of the three firms that completed logos for the second competition.
McClain called the process an exercise in free enterprise.
Cost of the search
"This is like any entrepreneurial organization that takes risks," he said. "We made an effort a couple of years ago in the context of the new strategic plan, and that effort didn't work out. So we stood back and took another shot at it in a different way. And that hasn't resonated, and we're ready to move on.
"This is a community where the traditional university seal has been associated with the university through decades and decades of use," McClain said, noting that his own briefcase bears the traditional university seal with "Manoa" at the bottom.
"That can be the basis for identification of the university in a graphic sense going forward."
The seals are rendered in different colors for each campus, and bear the name of the 10 campuses at the bottom.
As the committee finished deliberations yesterday and McClain announced his decision, a random sampling found students pleased with the outcome.
"I kind of like the seal," said KTUH disc jockey Ross Jackson, 22, a religion major who has numerous items of clothing bearing its likeness. "I'm happy with that decision. I never really disliked the seal."
Japanese exchange student Aya Kitamura, who is studying for a master's degree in Japanese studies, said she wasn't that attached to a school identity image.
"I just heard it cost a lot," Kitamura said. "UH has been facing a financial crisis. Why face another issue?"
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
