On Sept. 18, Northeastern unveiled to much fanfare a new “graphic identity” after running a teaser on the Northeastern homepage for a week prior.

It turns out, after months of committees, the best Northeastern and local firm Korn Design could come up with was writing “Northeastern,” the Baskerville font and a slightly touched-up seal.

The new logotype, ostensibly meant to bring an air of distinction and cachet to the school, does the opposite. It’s nearly identical to that of a myriad of other institutions (Dartmouth, UC Berkeley and Bowdoin come to mind).

Worse, this change squanders Northeastern’s heavy investment in its previous brand. The distinctive and well-fleshed-out look Northeastern adopted for everything from internal memos to nationwide advertising campaigns has become familiar. It uses condensed Futura font for the logo itself, document headings and signage. This is replaced or complemented by Seria font for minor elements on occasions when Northeastern wants to project some sense of prestige.

The light ray stripes from the old university seal became a graphical motif repeated in many forms. All of this marketing made the place at times feel more like a theme park than an institution of higher learning, but it distinguished the school in a way that the new approach does not.

No doubt lots of marketing materials will now need to be redesigned. And when they do, they may as well change the slogan to “Northeastern: We’re pretty much like everyone else.”

– Dan Grover is a middler computer science major.