Eric Zuniga, Campus Carrier deputy news editor
Center, will be updated when scheduled renovations are due. Eric Zuniga | Campus Carrier
After six rounds of student focus groups and numerous design iterations, the Office of Marketing and Communications is still working to create a new logo for athletics that will replace the current Viking head imagery.
According to Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Communications Nancy Rewis, 14 students submitted ideas for the new logo after the office solicited student submissions when the rebranding was announced. Creative Services chose to work with two of these students to develop their designs further.
The two students submitted designs that drew on Viking folklore. One submitted a stylized dragon’s head, a decoration of Viking warships, while the other suggested an image of a Viking longship. Rewis said that students, athletes and coaches in focus groups didn’t immediately associate these designs with Berry’s mascot.
“I think the biggest thing with the dragon concept and the longship is that students and coaches didn’t immediately think ‘Vikings’ when they saw the visual,” Rewis said. “That’s where it’s not necessarily resonating with key constituents.”
With the response to these two designs, Director of Creative Services Shannon Biggers said that the Office of Marketing and Communications solicited open-ended suggestions from students.
“It was just a lot of different concepts that we put in front of folks to see, if the dragon head and the ship are not resonating, what are you looking for,” Biggers said. “[Athletics Director Angel Mason] socialized that with students and athletes to get a better understanding of what they hoped to see in a mark.”
Marketing and Communications provided this feedback to the creative agency the office is working with. The agency is currently working on new designs based on the feedback, according to Rewis.
“It’s probably been about three weeks since we shared anything with students, athletes or coaches,” Rewis said. “It’s kind of back into the agency’s hands in terms of figuring out what our path is for next steps, what this next phase looks like.”
Biggers said that Marketing and Communications will ensure the support of student and coaches before choosing a logo.
“We want folks to embrace this, so we want there to be some enthusiasm and energy in the mark and not quite so generic,” Biggers said. “Finding that perfect balance has been a challenge that we’re still [working on]. We know we’ll do it.”
The design process has been a collaborative effort between the students who submitted the designs, the creative agency and the Office of Marketing and Communications. Rewis said that feedback from the general student population, athletes and coaches has been essential.
“We absolutely will not make any decisions until we conduct more focus groups and share this with coaches, the students and the athletes,” Rewis said. “Their input is extremely important in this process.”
According to Director of Athletics Angel Mason, both non-athletes and athletes have been included in the focus groups. A small number of non-athlete students participated in a series of focus groups over the summer. The Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) has also played a key role in providing feedback.
“They are a focus group that actually represents all of our varsity programs, because there’s at least one representative from every varsity team on there,” Mason said.
Students in focus groups have suggested alternative ideas like oars and weapons, helmets and phalanxes. Because the college is considering replacing the Victor the Viking mascot as well, Biggers said that the new logo should be something easily turned into a mascot.
“Early on we were very intentional about wanting something that we could animate, so that was one of our top priorities,” Biggers said. “It’s hard to consider the helmets and the battle axes and the oars—how are you going to animate that?”
Changes to the Victor mascot will be considered only after the logo is finalized, according to Rewis.
Berry College President Steve Briggs, along with Mason, announced the athletics rebranding in a Student Government Association meeting in April. The President’s Office, in an email to students, said that the college wanted to unify inconsistent typography and use a logo that better represented women’s and men’s teams. The college hoped to complete the rebranding by the beginning of this fall.
The President’s Office unveiled the new primary wordmark, based on Berry’s institutional shield logo, in July. This logo has already replaced the previous inconsistent marks on Berry merchandise and is already being used on athletic facilities that were renovated over the summer.
Once the replacement for the Viking head logo, known as the secondary mark, is finalized, the college will replace the old logo with either the new wordmark or the new secondary logo only when scheduled renovations are due.
“As it relates to any facilities on campus that have the Viking head, those won’t change unless there’s a maintenance update to those spaces,” Rewis said. “It’s a multi-year process for rolling out the new branding.”
The college received pushback over its decision to replace the Viking head logo at a town hall held shortly after the rebranding announcement. Mason said that students should keep in mind that athletes, not branding, are the most important part of Berry athletics.
“The things that show competitive spirit are the individuals in the jerseys, not the image that we throw out there,” Mason said. “We put life into the image, not vice versa.”
Rewis said that students who want to provide their input on the new logo should get in touch with the Office of Marketing and Communications.
“What we could do is compile a list of students that are interested and then when we’re ready to conduct more focus groups, we could ask them to be part of the focus groups,” Rewis said.
Rewis added that the office hopes to give another update on the rebranding by the end of the semester.