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Last week the NCAA ruled that member universities will not be able to use American Indian mascots, logos or nicknames in post-season home playoff games starting in 2008. Aside from the obvious debate on how far politically correctness will go in this country regarding this announcement, it will be interesting to see what the affected schools will do to re-brand themselves.

After all the lawsuits and debates are decided, we may see an influx of new college logos and mascots. Surely it will be a difficult transition, especially since many of the schools have been around for more than 100 years and have so much tradition and brand (or school) recognition.

Three schools may have the most difficult challenge: U of U Utes, University of Illinois Fighting Illini, and Florida State Seminoles. Even mentioning the schools’ names brings to mind their colors, logos, and uniforms. And all three schools have teams that participate in post-season play (although FSU may not be affected as there is no playoff in football).

If the affected schools do end up having to change their logos, mascots, etc, it would be wise for them to at least continue with their current colors, as people will still be able to identify with the schools’ familiar hues. In the science of brand recognition, it is said that people first recognize shape, then color, and then words. So if the colors go unchanged, at not least all the efforts the schools have made to brand themselves will be lost.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Logo Design, Logo Design News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.