Carolina has had most of the week to get to her new look.
The primary logo for apparel, social media, smaller items and certain marketing items is now a simple “UofSC.”
University communications announced refreshed logos and a new brand strategy at the communicator’s network meeting and on social media on Jan. 9. Director of brand strategy J.C. Huggins said the change was an effort in making the university brand "immediately recognizable [and] easily understood."
The traditional logo, with the palmetto tree and Historic Horseshoe gates, was refreshed by removing “1801” from the bottom and one pair of prongs on the tree.
“Part of our charge, as far as this identity was concerned, was to evolve the tree and gate into something that was a little bit more contemporary and a little bit more scalable and then to build a family of marks around that to help support it,” said Kyle Kastranec, creative director for the marketing company Ologie. Huggins worked with the company on presenting the revised brand campaign.
Part of the revision was an official logo change from "USC" to "UofSC." After years of ambiguity, USC is disappearing completely from university communications.
“We’re not necessarily asking people to change the way they talk about this place. So many people have it deeply ingrained in them that this place is and always will be USC and that’s fine,” Kastranec said. “If people want to start calling it UofSC and started to gain some equity in that name I would love to see that happen, but here this is more of an inward going out message.”
Liz Porter, Ologie's senior account manager, said it's about advancing national representation and "looking at this brand through a fresh lens."
“A lot of what we’ve done on the identity side has been to help streamline, modernize, contemporize our marks,” Kastranec said.
The communications leadership hopes that the refreshed branding will lead the university in 2019 and increase national representation.
“I think without an aim for a brand that keeps us aiming higher and moving forward then we don’t have a bigger picture to work towards,” Porter said.