In this chapter of my blog, I would like to talk about the design and semiotics of our University's undergraduate and graduate programs faculties’ logotypes. The face of the whole faculty is those logos by which people judge our place of study. The Design is a crucial thing when we came up to the advertisement and appearance of some product that we want to sell and make others buy. In this situation our product for selling is education. Students, parents, teachers, even investors look up to these flags and decide whether they want to study at, work in or with our university, and mainly its faculties. So, in this blog paper, we will judge and criticize (mostly criticize) designs of our logotypes.
There are 4 faculties of undergraduate study program: School of Engineering (SEng), School of Science and Technologies (SST), School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS), and School of Mining and Geosciences (SMG). And 4 faculties of graduate study program: School of Business, School of Education, Graduate School of Public Policy (GSPP), and School of Medicine. Each of logotypes supposed to reflect each faculty's main field of research and study. The purpose of the logotype is semiotically introduce to people some companies or products (in our case faculty of the university), so that person visually can predict or guess what is the purpose of that "thing". As known, people always better at getting information through the visual type of performance, than through the big texts and different listening. That is why logotypes play a significantly important role in the lives of big companies and everything else, which cannot be described in 2 words. Nevertheless, I would not like to talk about all logos, probably I will choose only some of them, the best ones and the worst ones. My critic will be based on the book called "Universal Principles of Design".
The first logo to look at is the logotype of School of Engineering. For the view it seems that there is a huge, messy, blue circle, with some strange picture inside, that seems to be not very appropriate relating to the edges and idea of the study. But let's take a closer look at what we have. There are two circles, where in the outer one written "Nazarbayev University" and "School of Engineering". Nothing unusual, and pretty understandable. The color of the background is deep blue, and the color of the text is white. Nice contrast does not hurt eyes, bold shrift, overall it is good.
However, the main game starts in the inner circle. The first thing that my eyes catch is a little contour of the Kazakhstan territory, with white edges, and light blue fulfill. Apart from it, there is also an illustration of Nazarbayev University’s entrance from the Turan street which is pictured linearly (like there is only white lines, only the contour). Here I have a big question to creators: How new people supposed to know how the Turan entrance look like? I am not even talking about the foreigners, who probably may not know how the territory of Kazakhstan looks (thinking about possible investors/new teachers/new international students?). But I am sure that except students, professors, and Nazarbayev University workers, very few people ever entered the University from the back side. Okay, now you know how our backup entrance looks like, thanks to the SEng! This unclearness of what is going on in the picture means that designers are failed in making this logo affordable and proper. (UPD p.20)
In addition, on the inner side, there is also some words are written on the light-light blue (looks like grey) background: Create - Innovate - Design - Develop. Everything is clear, but they definitely need to work on the design side. Engineers in truth every time create and innovate something. Civil engineers build buildings, Chemical engineers create new connections and substances, Mechanical engineers and Electrical engineers develop and innovate new tools that can even more comfort our lives.
Overall, I do not much like the logotype of SEng, and there is a lot that can be done better. The overall picture looks boring and unremarkable, not many contrasts in colors, and there are no straight lines of the picture, thus no idea division and no common concept of logotype can be identified. This means that there is a very blur alignment of the whole picture, which does not work very well, especially when we are talking about the design of logos. (UPD p.22)
If I would be a designer, I probably will switch to another color, add more intensity, put the picture of gear, or pipes, hard hat, or even a plan of evacuation! Anything else than the map and entrance to education building.
Let's move on the second logo, to see if this one is better than previous. School of Science and Technology. I like this logo. The sun represents the subjects of Biology and Physics. Sun is the reflection of everything life, everything that can move, eat, reproduce, and grow. Also, physics partially is about the light, its speed, spreading, and optics. In each of this sun is important. The next we see is the ring around the sun. It looks like a ring around the planet. As I know every gas likely planet have rings. The planet, universe, galaxy, it is all about the astrology. Also, one of the natural sciences.
Inside the sun, we can observe a gear, which probably can be the sign of something mechanical. Like physics. It is also interesting and has a place to exist on the logo. The last but not least is the outer ring of the logo, where University and faculty names are written. Between these two writings, we can see the Kazakh ornaments, which looks very similar to the plants, maybe that is one of the premises to Biology science.
I like everything about this logo, but not the color. The color of the sun is faded orange, which is not very attractive looking. But maybe designers cared about the viewer's eyes, so did not want to hurt them, by making the sun bright yellow. However, in my opinion, the yellow would look better than faded-orange.
And one more thing to mention about the minuses of the logo is the absence of some semiotics of chemistry! Chemistry is one of my most favorite subjects, and its absence makes me sad. It is one of the most important fields of study, designers might include some images of test tubes of explosions to show the chemists.
There are definitely a few things that I would like to change or add to this logo, but still, it is very good. It is simple, without any mystery, but still with some zest, so I really like this one (especially in a contrast to the SEng). The is no problem with alignment and affordance, which are the key elements of logotypes' design. (UPD)
Now I want to write about the another horrible, probably the most horrible logo out of all. Graduate School of Public Policy. Just take a quick look on that piece of art! It is round, just like others. Two circles, on the outer written the name of faculty and university. The overall color is brown, probably the only cool thing about this logo. In the inner circle, we see GSPP written, which is understandable, and quite okay, not so original or interesting. Below it, there is the text which says, "Good Governance matters", nothing to judge, it is true, and sounds good, can be the chant of the football team of GSPP.
But let’s talk about the biggest trash of today's blog: What is it in front of it all? What is the animal there? Does it even exist? What kind of relationships this animal and PUBLIC POLICY can ever have? Why this animal is so creepy and strange??? What about designers might be thinking when they decided to do it?
Ughh, okay, lets deal with what we have, there are no other options. First of all, if my friend from Almaty did not tell me that this animal is a symbol of Almaty, Snow Leopard, I would never know and even think about this. When I first had a look on that picture, I thought that this animal looks like a screwy dragon or something came from the myths (with which I use to fear my uncles), or anything else, but never a LEOPARD! I don't even know how this snow leopard is connected to the Public Policy. Okay, it is a symbol of Almaty, a symbol of huge mountains, it can be even the symbol of independence! But I still see no relationship between all those things and this poor animal. There is no reason to talk about the principles of design described at UPD. There are so many possible things that can determine the public policy, such as the constitution, a court, a judge, white house, scales, and etc. But they chose Snow Leopard. Well, I am not a professional in this field, I even do not know how to use photoshop, and I do not know how to write a text on the image, so, I am not the best critic for their work. But I hope, that someday someone will change this logo for the sake of our university.
I want to move to something nice. School of Business is a faculty for graduate students which exists in every good university. I think that our logo for the GSB is very good. It is simple but still interesting, fresh, eye-catching. I look at this, and I say "Yes, that is cool!". There is nothing excess, everything is maximally simple. The color is bright, brave, it is a color of business people, of active people, of bright people. And in the very center, the deep red point is a Kazakhstan. The heart of Eurasia, of the whole world. Every trade in Eurasia goes through our country. Which gives us an opportunity to develop, find investors, make a good export and import, sale to other countries our domestic products. These all in one is illustrated on the logo of GSB. I would not change anything in that logo, maybe just make the map bigger and put it a little bit closer on center, but not more than this.
This was my small analysis of the best the worst logotypes of the faculties’ that out university have. To sum up, I would like to say that for the design the most important thing is a concept, idea. Out of what design should be done. The things such as color, lines, intensity, contrast are also very important, but as we saw, if the idea and concept are making its deal, then the overall design will look good. However, it is still easy to kill the good concept with awful interpretation, which we also discussed in this work. The common principle for all 4 designs is a form and the use of iconography. Logos themselves are some kind of iconographical work, so there were no need to talk about it more than we did. (UPD p.110)