Have You Heard?

When someone approaches Wichita State University’s Barth Hague about using the school’s logo in conjunction with something they’re producing, like a T-shirt, the associate vice president for university relations has a hard time responding.

“Well, I don’t know,” he’s been known to say. “We don’t really have any rules.”

But the university recognizes the need to establish some guidelines and rules for using the school’s name and logo. Wichita’s Gardner Design was selected to create a comprehensive visual identity system after a request for proposals. The firm will be paid $50,000.

There were 27 responses to the RFP nationally, and Hague says a lot of the proposals were great. He says WSU wanted to hire a firm that best fit its needs, so it wasn’t necessarily intent on hiring a local firm.

“But that’s what we ended up doing,” Hague says. “The fact that they’re local is great.”

WSU’s branding won’t change, but how other organizations use it will.

“Most organizations have fairly comprehensive rules that corporate communications can follow,” Hague says. “These are the rules of the road.”

He expects the new guidelines to be in place by the end of the summer.