Ya, Waterloo interestingly enough didn't change the logo on their website though...

But back on the topic of 1280, it's been posted here that the logo is going to be changed so that the E is in the regular font as the rest of the logo... haven't heard any updates other than that.

Originally Posted by Chad

But back on the topic of 1280, it's been posted here that the logo is going to be changed so that the E is in the regular font as the rest of the logo... haven't heard any updates other than that.

Didn't we "vote" on the name 1280, not twelveeighty?

Originally Posted by micadjems

Didn't we "vote" on the name 1280, not twelveeighty?

Yes we did

How do you say 1280?

Do you say "one two eight zero"?

Or maybe " one thousand two hundred and eighty"?

There's also "twelve-eighty"

Could be "douze-quatre-vingt"

Etc, etc.

I'm not the person who said "lets use words for the logo", but the pronunciation of a name such as 1280 should be clarified, and I suggested so in our last SRA meeting. I said that the name's pronunciation should be clarified in the bylaw (like has been for other acronyms), for legal reasons and just to be perfectly clear.

The decision to use words instead of the numbers in the logo may have had nothing to do with the reasons why I wanted a pronunciation clarified in the bylaw however, and I cannot speak for the EB.

i was under the impression you cant get a liqour licence if a establishment is just numbers. Hence Club 77, or Lot 332. So I think 1280, is something that students can say, but for legal purposes it has to be written out.

Originally Posted by Phoenix

i was under the impression you cant get a liqour licence if a establishment is just numbers. Hence Club 77, or Lot 332. So I think 1280, is something that students can say, but for legal purposes it has to be written out.

Ah, that is interesting. Makes sense then.

That may be true, I don't know. I'm not sure why that would be the case... rules are supposed to have reasons behind them, and I can't think of any for this one.

It's not often I post here to give my opinion, or anything, but I think in this instance I would like to.

I think it is a terrible mistake to discount the brand management of a company, business unit, or organization. Brand loyalty is a key contributor to a successful business - creating a large customer base, loyal staff, and creates goodwill for the company (something I think that the business units of the MSU - and the Union as a whole need to look at). A logo is an extremely important part of the brand management mix, and should not be discounted. The logo is a very important tool to generate a quick resonance with clients and build the image of the unit in question. Of course other factors such mentioned previously as "more important" such as quality of service, pricing points, and atmosphere clearly play an important part as well, but are incomplete if the brand is damaged by an un-capturing and disliked logo. Without leveraging an effective brand, the Union - and 1280 - are missing out on tremendous opportunity.

As referred to by Rohan earlier, I would also like to say that I think the SRA (or, more typically referred to as the Board of Directors - "Board"- in a corporate setting), the Executive Board (EB), and the Leadership team (what this union calls the Board of directors - for some reason I have yet to wrap my head around) are consistently moving towards a micro management approach to doing business. I would caution against this. Through reading SRA and EB minuets; you can see what I am talking about. I think the SRA/EB interferes too much with the day-to-day running/operations of the union (which typically should be looked after by the Leadership & Management teams) and not enough about corporate strategy, long term direction, or results produced by the Union’s Leadership. This is best highlighted by recent meeting minuets from the EB that there was a motion and formal vote put fourth to change the location of the comptroller’s office. I think this is way to small of an issue for the EB to be focusing on, and in most - if not all - other corporations decisions like this would never go to the Board - but would be just decided upon and acted by management and leadership, let alone a voting process. The Board and EB should set the spend more time developing strategy, approving results leadership makes, and keeping the Union accountable to its members rather than worrying about petty issues - the Leadership and management should execute and measure that strategy how they see fit (and this may include dealing with specifics such as office relocations). I think the Board has moved too close to the first. This is a very dangerous direction, not just because of the negative issues of micromanagement but the Board and the EB are made and operate as rather beaucratic units - something that could be good for strategy, but not for running business operations.

On the topic of Macinsiders. I see that there has been some verbal resistance to gathering opinion/communicating on macinsiders because it is not an "offical" resource. Again, this I think is because the union operates with too much a beauractic/polictical focus and not enough as a NPO/Business. Regardless whether Macinsiders is a formal MSU club or not, the fact remains the same. Students use this website. Not all do, but I would suggest a significant portion. To not leverage this tool is a mistake. I think the union should look at this site for what it is - an effective tool to hear from it’s members. No, it’s not going to be perfect or produce all the results you need, which is why it should only constitute a portion of its communication/opinion gathering portfolio. But to get proclaim that it wouldn't be a valuable tool because it is not overseen by the Union is a waste of good resources. Its a great tool and arguably has already produced some amazing results, leverage it - you give up too much if you don't.

Finally, I would like to talk about the idea of opinion gathering of students. I think, because of the large scale projects that the union has been undertaking and PR that the union has been subject to over the last couple of years - the idea of "consulting" students has become a redundant phrase - a catch line, or buzz phrase. Everything that we tend not to agree with we consistently say "students weren't consulted", "we need to consult more students", and "we need to get student approval". Sooner, rather than later, there will be a natural tendency to move towards getting student approval for every minute detail (something that has becoming the SRA's management style - see second paragraph for why I disagree with this). I think this is simply ineffective. And although I think gathering student opinion can be extremely important it has become over-emphasized. Simple fact - you’re not going to please everyone. Everyone will have a different opinion and different thought processes. Just like this post is my opinion, but will be disagreed with by another poster. Take a look at most publicly traded companies. Owners buy shares for a company which they pay for (not unlike our membership dues for the union) Shareholders elect a Board of directors (our SRA) and that’s pretty much the end of it, except for shareholder proposals once per year at the company’s Annual General Meeting. Owners are not consulted every time the company wants to open a new business, change a logo, or undertake a project. The leadership reports to the board, and the board approves that direction - if necessary depending on the level of corporate governance in rare circumstances special shareholder meetings would be called to vote on merges/splits etc if required (not unlike our referendums). I recognize that the Union and a public traded company are two very different entities, with two very different goals and approaches, but I think the union has become too beaucratic to operate in the best interests of the students. I would challenge the Union to start to look at things from a different angle, a different perspective. Somethimes the only way to come up with better soultions is to explore unexplored areas and throw out the status quo. The status quo that many would argue is not working.

So there we have it, just my opinion - the direction I would push to move in if I were on the SRA, the EB, or the union’s management/leadership. I am sure many will disagree, but thats what is so exciting about opinions - they are always different. I am not saying what I have to say is the “correct way”, just what I have been thinking while reading this thread. If you got to the end of this post that has become rather long, I appologize for the long read.

Cheers,
--

James Steels

Hey James,

I agree with just about most of the things you say here; however there are a couple of problems. The third paragraph and its analogy of shareholders is a bit inaccurate, the reason being that an investor has a free choice regarding the company he decides to put his money in. He does his research and on paper differentiates between a company he feels is well run and one he feels isn't(hence won't make a profit). Similarly Corporations are run by talented and educated professionals and have a much more streamlined and fine tuned buisness structure that is equipped to suceed, an investor has no need to take part in everyday runnings of that buisness and he can fully trust them to run it. Another notion is that a student union is "equal", every member in it has equal right to the other.

The MSU is different, it is a "union" that you cannot opt out of. Hence you have inalienable rights to how it is run, similarly the people running it are 90% students like everyone else, and in all fairness it isn't the same difference as between a specialized corporate employee and an investor. But I do agree with you that it has become Bureaucratic and you can clearly see that by the constant culture of criticism and a HUGE difference between what a 10 member BOD decides and what the general consensus among students is. You can clearly see that by the outrage against first the name choice(Rusty Scholar) and now the logo. It clearly is different then a corporate structure. And secondly as far as logos and brand management is concerned, a corporation spends Millions and Millions on it to multimedia firm and even the work of such experts is carefully deliberated before being released. Our logo was something that looks like it was done 5 minutes before a meeting! Rohan/Chad came up with better stuff in a few hours!


I fully realize that the whole transparency, involvement, student input has become a laughable cliche that is bandied around far too much without alot of constructive efforts being made to actually go through with it. I have only been here an year, but I still noticed that this version of the SRA started out pretty enthusiastically regarding the whole communication bandwagon, but as expected it has stuttered to a halt within a few months(atleast for my faculty). Hence you can see the students only hearing about a logo(which they are against in consensus) because of the Sil. Hence as usual people are going against the current regime with every new incident, what makes it worse though is the role of the SRA in all this. The SRA should according to democratic ideals be responsible directly to the constituents first rather then the BOD, in contrast we are seeing SRA members acting out in negative manner and dismissing student opinion because of its apparently offensivley critical nature.



But I still feel that student input is the most important issue for a student union, atleast for me personally. I have this rather utopic and quixotic view of how I envision the end of student apathy and a rise in student involvement in every descision, but more importantly done in a more streamline fashion(It's a bit like a utopic ideal of a perfect competition market, you might understand it that way).



And I clearly feel it is possible, it doesn't take more then 5 minutes to post up detailed 2000 word information broadcasts(which has clearly been lacking in the SRA Blog) which leave out less room for criticism. One of the reasons there has been criticism is that there simply isn't enough infomation being put out there for various reasons, people hence are filling in the blanks on their own with often cynical assumptions. They can be avoided by additional efforts. It sure looks messy the whole student input idea right now, but if you look at it from angle of what it "could be" not what "it is" you'll see where I'm coming from!

Huzaifa,

The Rusty Scholar thing would never have come to fruition had it not been for the SRA being part of the process. If the process was left to the managers of the restaurant, we would have had a different name/logo and everything would have been done months ago.

The problem with the MSU is the institutional attitude that develops within the SRA. Individually, the members themselves are great. A lot are my friends. However, when they get in SRA mode, things tend to devolve and everyone acts in a manner where their voice can be heard the loudest.

Nobody invested in the processes takes a back seat when it's necessary, and nobody thinks about some motions as "people smarter than me made this recommendation so I'm going to go with that."

The tendency to argue about minute details is prevalent within the SRA, and this halts serious progression. Furthermore, there is another prevalent problem that the SRA does many things that break precedent.

I understand your views on this Union being run on student views, but there are instances where the students are misinformed. I would like to cite the 2005 Coke referendum as an example.

The fact of that matter is, there are people whose jobs it is to do research, and run the operations of the multiple entities within the MSU, but all their efforts must be put through an SRA that always finds an avenue to interfere with progress.

If I had my way, the SRA would cease to exist. We would have a more corporate structure with each faculty being represented on a legislative stage by their faculty President who would allow the management do their jobs, but to keep abreast of developments; presenting valuable viewpoints from their constituency.

Input is important, and the job of the SRA member is to garner this input, but I don't believe that every decision needs to be popular in order for that decision to be the right one.

Nicely worded James. Thanks for your input and giving your opinion

Originally Posted by deadpool

Huzaifa,

The Rusty Scholar thing would never have come to fruition had it not been for the SRA being part of the process. If the process was left to the managers of the restaurant, we would have had a different name/logo and everything would have been done months ago.

The problem with the MSU is the institutional attitude that develops within the SRA. Individually, the members themselves are great. A lot are my friends. However, when they get in SRA mode, things tend to devolve and everyone acts in a manner where their voice can be heard the loudest.

Nobody invested in the processes takes a back seat when it's necessary, and nobody thinks about some motions as "people smarter than me made this recommendation so I'm going to go with that."

The tendency to argue about minute details is prevalent within the SRA, and this halts serious progression. Furthermore, there is another prevalent problem that the SRA does many things that break precedent.

I understand your views on this Union being run on student views, but there are instances where the students are misinformed. I would like to cite the 2005 Coke referendum as an example.

The fact of that matter is, there are people whose jobs it is to do research, and run the operations of the multiple entities within the MSU, but all their efforts must be put through an SRA that always finds an avenue to interfere with progress.

If I had my way, the SRA would cease to exist. We would have a more corporate structure with each faculty being represented on a legislative stage by their faculty President who would allow the management do their jobs, but to keep abreast of developments; presenting valuable viewpoints from their constituency.

Input is important, and the job of the SRA member is to garner this input, but I don't believe that every decision needs to be popular in order for that decision to be the right one.

Oh okay, but then again my knowledge of the Coke Referendum is still muddled even though I did make an attempt to learn more about it after hearing about a new referendum at the March SRA session. But I clearly see where you are coming from regarding the SRA wasting way too much time and then when the vote on a motion comes they tend to vote no different from what they most probably were originally going to vote for and I there is a good chance I might be wrong but I had this wierd feeling that after 7-8 hours SRA members were clearly not paying attention to the mundane arguments and ended up voting in cliques(atleast that's what the facial expressions showed).

But I really am pretty Quixotic so I still lean slightly towards keeping regular students in the loop under all circumstances, but I suppose you are right. Perfect information is a neccesary component of what my ideal scenario looks like, but it clearly isn't possible when sociopolitically biased events like the Coke Refferendum cause a spread of "wrong" information. My Scenario would only work if there is No Student Apathy and everyone knows what they are talking about based on their own rational knowledge/research and not something they heard from someone. So I guess therein lies my contradiction! Apathy cannot be solved unless we aim towards an open up student involvement and use their input, but if we do so we make the whole operation counterproductive!

Soo I completely came across this new website Called Advark(Which gets your questions answered by random people! A truely awesome site)

Here's a collection of answers, though the responders were probably biased since I reffered them to the Sil Website for the logo and they probably read the comments.

Dave(Los Altos, USA):
the collegiate block E doesn't fit well with the elegant serif text. also, the E cocked at an angle looks more sloppy than deliberate. I think the biggest problem is that there are 2 disparate styles here that just don't go well together. Most of the logo is clean and elegant, but the block E is bold, and cocked at a quirky angle. Oil and water. May I suggest you try crowdspring.com to get some alternate ideas for your logo. While you can't get the money spent back, you can get a better logo for not much more money.

(Horacio, Mexico)
Hello Huzaifa, glad to receive your question as it is one or simply the best that I've received. Even if I do not personally know the place, I'm starting to read the comment following the logo on the page you gave me.... In order to discuss them with you; At a glance, this case remembers me, as a Marketer, the Tropicana Case... in which they spent also something like $35 Mill in redesigning their brand image, spent that, like in the case you mention turned out to be a total mistake. Let me read the whole comments... but I think that this would never happen if the production designers would have done some crowdsourcing... He is reffering to www.crowdsource.com

Melanie, Germany

Maybe I don't have the desired background, but IMHO the big E falling down has a negative message, like something broken, a failure, not being successful. The dynamic element shouldn't express something going downwards. And the big E takes way too much attention regarding the rest of the logo. Hope this helps.

Ok, I see. Numbers actually work better, especially when 1280 is part of an address. The test logo on page 1 in the forum thread is cool, too. It has the right message.

Joe, Burlington
I'm not a professional designer, but with that said...there's no 'flow' to the logo. The E completely breaks it and disturbs my eyes natural preference for moving from left to right.

Elwyn , 56, Australia
"The problem with the new logo is the "E". What does the "E" convey except being common to the two words? It serves no useful purpose in being singled out for treatment like that. When a logo is created everything in the logo needs to mean something, and the "E" has no purpose in being the central device. Also, for a logo signifying a social point where people meet the design is too traditional in the sense that the font is far too staid. I think there needs to be a whole rethink of this to signify to the audience the "fun" and the "social" nature of what is trying to be conveyed. Just my thoughts. But I have been on many committees creating logos before."




So even though this might not be the largest of samples, it does prove somewhat that even regular folks have problems with it!

p.s: I don't have an official copy of the updated logo(the one with no crooked E) So I can't run them by Aardvark! Anyone else is free to do so and post it up here!

Just changing to a sans-serif font and simplifying it makes a big difference. The colours are less childish and are versatile enough to blend with any atmosphere the place may take on.



I agree that the crooked E implies that it's falling a part but this is an improvement.

This font is just the one that was from the bottom tagline.

Originally Posted by florencem.

Just changing to a sans-serif font and simplifying it makes a big difference. The colours are less childish and are versatile enough to blend with any atmosphere the place may take on.



I agree that the crooked E implies that it's falling a part but this is an improvement.

This font is just the one that was from the bottom tagline.

It's an improvement, but as you mentioned the slanted E which in turn leads to a lower "ighty" makes it look like it's falling apart. Not sure why they designed it like that.