Rebranding Imperial College London into a household name
What I think works well and less well in the university's updated brand identity
In this post, I’m going to outline two things I think work well and two things I’m not convinced about in Imperial College London’s rebrand, which is going live from today!
The logo is the focus of this post because, while there’s so much more to a rebrand, the complete brand guidelines haven’t been yet released. For now we have some highlights on their website. And because otherwise this would be way too long.
Rebrands are all about identity, so people’s reactions can be very personal. As an Imperial graduate who was never a fan of their old brand, I’m very happy this rebrand is happening. Still, I will do my best to make this post objective!
What needed to change?
After being engaged by Imperial, Pentagram released their brand identity research report last August. These points stood out for me:
The new brand needed to feel “warmer and more human”, less “cold, corporate and dated”, and ignite the idea of “free thinking and imagination”. Interestingly, it was less important for it to feel “‘bold,’ ‘exciting,’ and ‘fast-paced’”, which is unusual for a modern rebrand.
The new brand needed to dial up Imperial’s unique position as a university with a “hyper-focus on STEMMB [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine, and Business]”, a “world changing impact”, and access to “the London experience”.
The new brand needed to turn Imperial into a household name to compete better in particular with the more commonly known Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford in the US.
So before I give my thoughts on the new logo, I want to emphasise that I am a big fan of Pentagram’s work and was rooting for them to deliver an awesome result.
Ok, let’s go!
What I think works well
The layout and primary colour choice are much better
Imperial’s old logo felt visually unbalanced, with two lines of equally-sized, left-aligned text. The two-tone version they phased out a few years ago was arguably more balanced because the hierarchy between the ‘Imperial College’ in the first line and the lighter and more desaturated ‘London’ in the second line was clearer.
The new single-line logo on the other hand is much more balanced and the primary colour is visually more saturated because it has a higher hue value.
Yes, this has been achieved partly by dropping the ‘College London’ segment of the name, reducing the logo text to just ‘Imperial’. But I think this is a tradeoff worth making because it gives the brand room to accommodate endeavours the institution wants to be known for beyond its core higher education offering.
They made a smart font choice
Imperial is a young university at only 117 years old compared to Oxford’s 928 years and MIT’s 163. Heritage is therefore not a central aspect of their public image. So it’s a logical choice to opt for a modern sans-serif font.
And they’ve smartly chosen a font that’s strikingly close to being monospaced, meaning that its letterforms are all designed to be the same width (if it wasn’t for the visibly wider ‘M’ letter in this case). This makes it great for programming and technical documentation where text alignment across rows helps legibility. And it therefore dials up Imperial’s STEMMB image.
The capital “I” also has horizontal bars now rather than being just a vertical stem, which makes it more recognisable as a letter and therefore opens up opportunities to use it as a logo on its own.
What I’m not so convinced about
The letter spacing doesn’t feel right
When you increase a word’s letter spacing, you instantly elevate its importance because 1) it physically takes up more space and 2) the increased whitespace accentuates the individual letters.
Think of a high end jewellery shop. The most important piece is often placed on its own in a dedicated area that is visually minimalistic. This placement elevates the piece by signalling that it deserves its own space and can afford to leave a lot of free space around it.
So too with the loose letter spacing in Imperial’s new logo. But I don’t think the effect is fully achieved because the combination of this font’s semi-bold weight and straight edged letterforms make the spaces between letters feel abrupt. Loose letter spacing tends to work better with serif fonts because their more organic shapes soften the transition from letter to space to letter again.
The capital “I” might not evoke strong enough brand recognition
While the new capital “I” is more recognisable as a letter than the old one, I’m not convinced it instantly evokes the Imperial brand when used on its own.
While I think there was smart logic behind the choice of font, the letterforms on their own are lack any ornamentation that would have created a strong brand recognition.
Compare it to Figma’s brand typeface which is also a sans-serif but is recognisable by the ‘ink traps’ in its letterforms.
In conclusion
It’s important to put visual identity changes into context.
This logo is just one part of a larger Imperial brand refresh that includes upcoming redesigns of their website and printed materials. The real test of a visual identity is when you start applying it to the most granular elements.
That’s when questions like ‘How should each colour be used?’ and ‘What type sizes and fonts are to be used in titles, body text, and so on?’ come up.
As of today, this exciting process is now in motion! I wish them success.
EDIT: there’s now a part 2!
