Why did Arts & Science need a visual identity system? 
One of the first things I noticed when I came to NYU four years ago was the proliferation of one-off logos that could be found all over Arts & Science. As I began to understand our very large and complex unit, it became clear that a longstanding lack of unit-level support around communications had led organically to a situation where our community of creative doers simply DIYed their own solutions. 

It was time to give our entities an easy way to identify themselves as part of Arts & Science while leveraging the power of the NYU brand in a compliant way. Around that time, Mark Courtney, the assistant vice president of creative and brand experience at NYU Marketing Communications, reached out about the same topic. The beautiful lockup prototypes he provided allowed my team to build out a flexible system of visual identity that could accommodate the huge variety of academic and administrative departments, stand-alone programs, research centers, institutes, and cultural houses that make up NYU Arts & Science. 

Thanks particularly to the meticulous work of Kate Almquist with the oversight of Lara Williamson, our website now has downloadable lockups for all of our Arts & Science entities, along with a guide that I created to explain how and why to use these assets.

Was the Arts & Science community open to this as a project?
Well, it’s a big community, but largely the answer is yes! Many people innately understand the benefits of a unified brand—these early adopters got the ball rolling. The feedback has been very positive, and the best evidence of community adoption is that we’re seeing the lockups in use all over Arts & Science.

How have you promoted the initiative?
We’ve emphasized the benefits to our community, from legitimizing their connection with NYU’s globally recognized brand to building their own department’s identity to making it easy to professionalize their communications. 

I was grateful for academic and administrative leaders in Arts & Science who partnered in adopting and socializing the lockups. Having the imprimatur of NYU MarComm was a very helpful selling point as well. Many have noted the tightening of NYU’s brand standards, making it easy to see this project as a natural extension of that work. 

How has this work been valuable to Arts & Science since its launch?
The authenticity inherent in a brand-compliant lockup is invaluable in and of itself, but the work has had other great benefits as well. 

Our lockups are a daily visual reminder of Dean Antonio Merlo’s vision of One Arts & Science: We are one community, even while our entities are unique and diverse.   

The visual identity system also supports our efforts to clarify the structure of Arts & Science and its place within NYU. Four years ago, we stopped using the confusing term ‘Faculty of Arts and Science’ (or FAS) to describe the academic unit that comprises our faculty, schools, and departments. Now, we are NYU Arts & Science (and yes, we use the ampersand to distinguish our name from the generic ‘arts and science’). Our lockups reinforce the name and have sped up the culture shift, fostered pride in our community, and importantly, helped our students contextualize the names of their schools—College of Arts & Science and Graduate School of Arts & Science.