The Winter 2014 edition of MIT Sloan Management Review extolled the virtues of a good logo. It asserted that a logo can have a significant impact on company performance in terms of revenues and profits. These words ring truer now looking at the outrage against MIT Sloan’s new logo, which was released on March 28, 2016.
Public Outcry Against MIT Sloan’s New Logo
When MIT Sloan School of Management shared its intended new brand identity, students and alumni responded by creating a change.org petition to change the logo back to their old one that every Sloanie loves and connects with. The campaign was started by Eswar Mani from Tokyon, Japan who has gathered 1,016 supporters. The petition is said to be delivered to the Senior Associate Dean, External Relations and International Program, Kris Schaefer and Dean David Schmittlein.
Students, alumni and outsiders alike are commenting against the introduction of the new logo on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and blogs. “An embarrassing logo diminishing the brand that students are proud to associate with”, “a jumbled mess”, “MIT looks like MT” [which sounds like empty], “an epic fail”, “breaking up of MIT and Sloan”, “loss of the I”, “pathetic”, “a logo more appropriate for employees of M/T Trucking Company” are some of the comments fired at the institution’s attempt to redesign their brand.
Typography of MIT Sloan’s New Logo
MIT Sloan – Old Logo (Left), New Logo (Right)
The previous logo had MIT’s name clearly emblazoned and it showcased a zeal for academic excellence. It attracted widespread love with people sharing comments such as: “I get a little giddy every time I see this logo.”
In the present logo, the letter “I” is italicized and translucent. The new logo also led to April Fool pranks with one publication writing that the letter ‘I’ filed a lawsuit stating,“I’ve essentially been airbrushed out of the picture here.”
The word management is prefixed before Sloan school and Sloan, a word that has had a life-changing impact on scores of independent professionals is in tertiary font type. It also lays foundation for confusion regarding the actual name of the school. The typography used is neither legible nor understandable. Experts all over the globe have termed this the sacrifice of the brand of a high repute institute like MIT Sloan School of Management.
As of this publication, the university had not updated Sloan’s brand identity in its branding guidelines and the MIT Sloan branding page link led to a 404 error.
The updates are still coming; one can only wait to see the end outcome. But two obvious takeaways are: (1) clear beats clever, and (2) any executable idea has to be thought through before implementation.