Cal Poly’s new logo blasted; recall petition launched

Cal Poly spent $340,000 on rebranding and, as often happens with such efforts, the new logo is being ridiculed.

Unveiled last week at the campus — California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo — the logo was revamped partly so it would look better on small digital screens.

The simplified academic shield drops three of previous images, keeping only the one depicting a quill and a hammer. The items are intended to represent the motto “learn by doing” (which is now in English rather than Latin).

To some, the icon resembles the hammer and sickle on the old Soviet flag. And the added element, a sunset behind Bishop Peak, has been criticized as reminiscent of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Rising Sun flag.

Beyond the specifics, the campus paper Mustang News reports, student comments have blasted the logo as poorly designed and “lacking sophistication” and the whole rebranding effort as “tone deaf” to student concerns.

One student started a petition to change the logo back. It has more than 7,000 signatures. Undergraduate enrollment at the San Luis Obispo campus is about 21,000.

Cal Poly has plenty of company on the issue of disputed rebrands.

The University of California in 2012 added a secondary logo for marketing and digital use. It was criticized as superficial and dismissive of tradition, and quite a few critics mentioned a toilet bowl.

The University of South Florida last year spent $1 million on a rebranding effort that produced, among other things, a new academic logo that was quite similar to the Merrill Lynch bull. After an uproar, the Tampa Bay Times reported, the school said it would scrap the logo and instead use the one that the school’s athletic departments had displayed for years, the letters “USF” with the “U” depicting a stylized bull’s head.

On the other hand, an alternative logo quietly rolled out for the city of San Jose has been generally applauded — with one fan even having it tattooed on his leg.

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