Seal Block: Special ohio Unit

Land-Grant Holy Land is reporting that ohio is updating their athletic logo and their official seal and, in the words of Luke Zimmerman, this "ruins everything." As the sports blogosphere's leading authority on university seals, we can't let this change go unremarked. Let's take a look at the old and the new:

Image modified from Land-Grant Holy Land.

So there is one big change and one big no-change. The big no-change is simple: this was the time to get rid of the small caps and put "THE" on equal footing with the rest of the university name. If you insist on calling your school "The Ohio State University," why wouldn't you make your seal say it? Just shift that ribbon down a little and you've got room.

The big change is something that should be problematic for any academic institution. The circular O on the shield has been replaced with the Block O that has signified ohio's athletics since 1958. That's the tail wagging the dog. It's not just something Mark Emmert says to himself to feel better at night, it's actually true: academics come first. Among other FBS schools, only TCU, East Carolina, and Rice have obvious links to their athletic team names on their official seals, and Rice in particular is forgiven because Owls are a well-established symbol of wisdom. (We're even forgiving ohio the buckeye leaf. It predates the athletic department.)

Last year's failed University of California System rebranding failed because the new logo was both modern and dated: it looked like it was made around 2010, and if it had been permanently adopted, it would look like it was made around 2010 a hundred years from now. Having an obviously dated seal isn't necessarily horrible - when we ranked the seals of the Big Ten, Purdue's 1960s-style seal had a modest amount of support - but it's not as good as a well-established classic. Even if classics are the best, a new seal can still have a timeless feel: Memphis's recent rebranding (warning: PDF) is a great example of a well-designed new university seal.

But seriously, ohio, you can't put your athletic logo on your official seal. This supports every stereotype you hear in Ann Arbor. That ohio only cares about winning The Game and mucking Fichigan and, in order to do that, they'll let their athletic department run roughshod over the university to the point that it actually changed the official seal. If you want to update the seal, just add some color: put in some scarlet and gray to replace the pencil shading. Be a university your athletic department can be proud of.

As for your hideous new athletic logo and wordmark: we have no particular opinion on that. We're a Michigan blog. As far as we're concerned, all your athletic designs are hideous.

Seal Block: Midwest Bracketologie

Picking an NCAA bracket using basketball knowledge is as much a recipe for success as picking based on the team's mascots or school colors. To have a truly scientific and rational decision-making process, we need to delve more deeply into the essence of the competing schools. What better way to reach that quintessence than by analyzing their seals? Thus, we present the Seal Block breakdown of the Midwest Regional. Will UNC live up to its top seed, or will a sleeper rise from the lower half of the field?


OPENING ROUND

 

(16) Vermont d. (16) Lamar
Lamar, like all schools in Texas, is sure to make us know they're located in Texas. However, their very basic design doesn't match up to Vermont's old-school details, including the Pythagorean theorem, which as Shaquille O'Neal reminded us, cannot be solved.

(12) California d. (12) South Florida
USF, as we discussed in the original Seal Block series, loses serious points for its horribly inaccurate globe. The only odd thing about California's seal is that section A starts halfway through the book, a small flaw in comparison. Cal brings home the victory.

Seal Block Special Edition: Little brother from another mother

The name "University of Cristal" was also briefly considered.

If ESPN and TSN (aka ESPN Canada) were to somehow convince Canadian universities to care about varsity sports even a tenth as much as American universities do, the next round of Big Ten expansion would have two obvious candidates for admission: The University of Toronto, the centre of Canada's largest TV market, and my undergraduate alma mater, The University of Western Ontario, the home of Canada's proudest university football tradition. Both schools would have to make enormous facilities upgrades for this to happen, and Toronto would have to stop being terrible at football, but academically both would be excellent fits for the CIC. Having two Canadian schools in the Big Ten hockey conference would help replace the Canadian Hockey League with a slightly less corrupt player development model, which would also be nice.

UWO has recently announced a major new marketing push asking for people to call it "Western." To Canadians, this is hilarious as no other province has a western directional school. We all call it Western already. The American equivalent to this would be the University of California at Los Angeles spending tons of money on marketing to convince people to call it UCLA.

This marketing push includes a quote from the university president which may go down as one of the stupidest most WTF things ever said by a university president ever:

Harvard isn’t just Harvard. It’s Harvard University. But you don’t have to say university. How long will it take Western to get there, I don’t know. Our goal is to become such a recognized brand that just Western means us.

I've been trying to make a snarky comment in response to that and I can't. I'm so confused that the best I could think to do was put in a snarky post tag.

Old logo: We have a tower!
New logo: Stag and lion slap-fight! Winner gets maple syrup!

I didn't enjoy my undergraduate years. People bragged a lot about how great they were, but backed up their boasts with alcohol consumption instead of academic performance. I really don't like getting the alumni magazine because it's a lot of fluff about how great the school is and far too little about the interesting stuff people are actually doing. It's like the school has an inferiority complex. Recently it hit me: UWO is Michigan State. It's Toronto's little brother.

Seal Block Week 14: The Grand Finale

Thanks everyone who voted for the Seal Block Top 25 and for everyone who slogged their way through 14 weeks of exciting academic symbolism! Before revealing the final poll results, I'd like to award a couple of special jury prizes. I looked for 126 seals and some schools make it easy to find and some make it almost impossible. The first special prize goes to Buffalo for the most sensible protection of their graphic identity. The gray stripes mean that an interested party can see it clearly, but can't pass it off as official. Emblematic of the wrong way to protect your identity is South Carolina, who has a great seal but makes it impossible for anyone to appreciate it. SC was disqualified from the Top 32 due to this crappiness. (Penn State was also disqualified from the Top 32 because it was, quite literally, the least I could do.) Penn also deserves mention for their clever bait-and-switch: their shield is based on the Penn and Franklin family coats-of-arms and is used on their merchandise. It's widely considered to be their seal, but their actual seal is the seven books of the liberal arts. The trivium and quadrivium: the original 3-4 defense against ignorance.

The second special prize goes to the most badass seals I found while searching. In third place is the U.S. winner, Davidson College, for featuring the brutal murder of a snake. Second place goes to Sweden's Lund University. It's a lion, wearing a crown, holding a frakkin' longsword. He's reading the Cabela's catalog in order to devise the most up-to-date countersafari techniques. "Do you know what those poachers won't be expecting?" he's thinking to himself. "A pride of lions armed with swords!" The year 1666 was a good year to be founded because years containing "666" are inherently badass.

It may be my Canadian jingoism showing when I declare Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University the winner, but no, that's some serious badassery. Dalhousie's named for its founder George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, and their shield and coronet, consisting of the eagle, crown, and unicorn head, comes from the Ramsay family coat of arms. For the Ramsays, the shield is supported by a gryphon and a greyhound, but, at some point, Dalhousie officials said, "To hell with that! That's not badass enough. We're adding some freakin' dragons." And so they did. They also get bonus points for using the only nonconfusing Latin abbreviation of a placename in North America.

 

And now, the 25 best seals in FBS! After the jump! I have written a haiku to celebrate each one.

Seal Block Week 13: As bad as the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving halftime show

If you haven't already done so, be sure to vote for The Top 25 university seals! We will announce the results a week from Wednesday. In the meantime, we take you on a grand tour of the dregs of academia as we celebrate the Worst Seals in the World!!

Imagine, if you will, a universe in which the Stanford Tree goes off and establishes its own college. You don't have to imagine very hard, because the resulting college would be roughly the same as Evergreen State College, the winner for worst overall seal. Its motto is omnia extares, or "let it all hang out." I believe the concept behind this seal is that the drawing is supposed to represent a childlike sense of discovery and wonder. However, it more accurately represents a childlike inability to draw and/or use an Etch-A-Sketch. I think the student body at ESC is quite content with their seal, but they could do much better by commissioning their most famous alumnus, Matt Groening, to draw a new one. If they want a drawing done without lifting the pen, they could go with this one.

Seal Block: Vote for the Worst! Vote for the Best!

So we are all finished ranking the official seals of the school in the so-called Football Bowl Subdivision. You can browse the whole series of posts here.

To finish off the series, we want input as to the best and worst university seals there are. For the best, the Top 32 are available in one image: (click to enlarge)

We're going to whittle that down to a Top 25, so post your Top 25 vote in the comments, or tweet it to me @schnoxl.

But before doing the best, we're going to vote for the worst. For the worst, you can nominate any post-secondary institution you want from anywhere in the world. The categories you can nominate schools in are:

• Worst Concept
• Worst Font
• Most Outdated Design
• Most Needlessly Busy
• Most Boring
• Creepiest
• Worst Use of an Ancient Language
• Most Incongruous Symbol
• Most Unintentionally Hilarious

I will evaluate your nominations based on the strength of your case, so if you really feel a school deserves to win a particular category, write up your case and make it funny.

The worst overall seal will not be a contested category, as we already know which college will be the clear winner in that category, and that college are clearly happy with that outcome.

We'll reveal the worsts next week and the bests the week after that, so submit your nominations asap!

Seal Block Week 12: The Independents and FCS cheer them on to their rivals

To finish off Seal Block's regular season, we consider the FBS Independents. Because there are only four and we know you need quantity as well as quality in order to best kill time, we're also including the six FCS schools that "won their way" into Seal Block by defeating FBS schools this year. Congratulations, FCS schools! The symbols of your identity can now be made the subject of fun.

10. BYU

What it's trying to say: A commonly used short form for "Brigham Young University" is "BYU."

What it's actually saying: Please don't think too much about the life and times and wives of our school's namesake.

At least at New Mexico State, someone had to have had a tiny glimmer of inspiration to say, "I know! Triangles!" BYU couldn't even reach that level of creative process.

Seal Block Week 11: The Sun Belt torches secondaries

Considering that this conference is called the "Sun Belt," they have a strange obsession with artificial light in their seal designs. Torches. Lots and lots of torches, as though there were no sun in their belt at all. Hopefully the Big East has pitchforks, so the SUNBEAST will be able to fight off all sorts of villains.

9. Middle Tennessee State

What it's trying to say: Food can be exchanged for goods and services.

What it's actually saying: Tennessee has more detail than can be adequately shown in a one-color seal.

MTSU's seal is a simplified version of the state seal, with the word "Murfreesboro" added, for obvious reasons. Tennessee's state seal is in full color and doesn't look too bad. MTSU uses one color and it looks terrible. But MTSU's real identity crisis can be found deep in its identity guidelines:

You know how you know when a school has a branding problem? When their official style guide tells you not to use their logo without the wordmark, because people will probably not know what the logo stands for.

Seal Block Week 10: Conference USA, where teddy bears sometimes do wear top hats

Finding the seals for major conference schools is easy. They're usually on Wikipedia or they can be located with a simple Google image search. Once you get down to Conference USA, you find schools that are more protective of the official status of their seals, and thus try to limit their dissemination on the Internet. Fortunately for me, most of these schools have never heard of "screen grab" technology and put nice clean versions of their seals in the online PDF versions of their identity guidelines. Only Rice was smart enough to put "For Official Use Only" over their seal in the identity guideline document. That's how you know they're the conference's nerd school.

DQ. UAB

It's Alabama's seal, with the word "Birmingham" in place of the founding date. That's a step down.

11. Central Florida

What it's trying to say: My horn can pierce the sky!

What it's actually saying: Lisa Frank is our Dean of Arts.

There are no words. As a writer for one of the top 20 Michigan sports blogs, I should be able to easily write a joke about a seal this awful. But I stared at it, and I stared at it, and I had nothing that could be expressed in words. Then, while looking on the Internet, it hit me exactly what is so terrible about this seal. Fifteen minutes in Gimp gave me what I needed.

OK, there's one made-up word: Nyan-Horse.

Seal Block Week 9: The WAC gives you something you can feel

The WAC. It's still a football conference? It's still in FBS? So we have to do a Seal Block about it? Well, I guess we don't, but it would be kind of silly to stop now.

8. New Mexico State

What it's trying to say: Derp.

What it's actually saying: Look, this is so bad that we changed it, OK?

Ooh, a mystery! NMSU has recently changed their seal to one that is not unbelievably shitty. The new seal, with a Zuni cross superimposed on the shape of the state with the letters N, M, S, and U in the four corners, is a significant improvement, despite the fact they refuse to put up a decent size version of it up anywhere on the Internet. You get no points for improving your seal if you don't let anyone look at it.

Despite NMSU's newfound interest in brand identity guidelines, their brand identity people are still bad at their jobs. You'd figure one of their priorities would be making sure that their Wikipedia page isn't displaying the old seal? Also somewhat amusing: the bookmarks on the web browser from this brand identity presentation.

More seal-based humor

Seal Block Week 8: The MAC is jammin' with Moxy Fruvous

The Mid-American Conference is looking for offhanded ways to improve the lives of communities in the north-central United States. Under their own volition, they took up their position. They are incapable of making references to the song by The Tallest Man On Earth with the same name.

13. Bowling Green

What it's trying to say: We've got grain and sun and arrows and mountains!

What it's actually saying: Mountains????

A PR blog favorably compares BGSU's graphic identity standards to those of nearby Toledo's. We'd like to remind everyone that a graphic identity is more than just a seal, and, since the seal is only used in official situations, it is frequently not considered part of the graphic identity. That's why we see BGSU here and Toledo much later, because Bowling Green's seal is pretty terrible. Mountains? Really? Mountains?

Seal Block Week 7: The Mountain West on a Mission

This week in the Seal Block, we've got the Mountain West conference and we've got our first disqualification. Which of the remaining seven seals will come out on top. Play a game of chess with death and find out!

DQ. UNLV

Now that we're out of the automatic qualifying conferences, we have to impose a rule: branch campus seals are excluded unless they are significantly different from those of the respective main campuses. UNLV's seal is more or less the same as Nevada-Reno's, so we won't see it until we visit the WAC in a couple of weeks.

Seal Block Week 6: The Big East in "The Octosigillion: The Zombie Diaries"

A secret society of the eight wealthiest mascots in the Northeast has just convened at an estate in Providence, RI, otherwise known as John Marinatto's basement. Chip crumbs, an almost empty bowl of mango-peach salsa, and an apology note to Sean Keeley form a still-life on an otherwise empty table. The basement itself is a 16-sided room, from which the mascots control the Northeastern bank money supplies, Fort Dix, ESPN and the Wesleyan College student newspaper.

On the walls of this room are eight seals. They are known as The Octosigillion.

Parental discretion is advised.

(holding a copy of C.F. Gauss's Disquisitiones Arithmeticae)
Listen up, ladies and gentlemen and neuters. TCU's going to be joining us soon, so we have to renovate this room so that it is a regular 17-sided polygon. In order to do that, the contractors have asked us to rate ourselves from best to worst-designed. Since we don't have names, I propose we adopt the names of our school's mascots for this discussion. Are you OK with that, Otto?

Wisterias and wonderlands! (coughs) I mean, whatever, as long as we don't have to have the same personalities. I'd hold off on those plans, Husky. Isn't that right, Panther?

Can we just get out of here? Otto and I got the invite from Greensboro, and we're heading down to the ACC. You coming with us, 'Eer?

The only message I got from ACC country is that we should do the ranking anyway, because a Michigan sports blog needs some midweek filler content during football season.

Seal Block Week 5: The Pac-12, where "Let your light so shine" could not be more aptly applied

Instead of introducing the Pac-12 seal ranking, I’d like to take a moment to pontificate on the break-up/retirement of R.E.M. In my role as Mid-Maryland correspondent, I need to point out that the lyrics of “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” are problematic. Specifically, the couplet “You’ll wind up in some factory that’s full time filth and nowhere left to go/Walk home to an empty house sit around all by yourself.” That is unlikely to happen in Rockville. As the primary manufacturing industries in Rockville are biotech, their factories had better be full time clean, without even a speck of filth. Furthermore, if the object of Mike Mills’s desire was able to afford a house in Rockville close enough to public transportation that she could walk home to it, she would have sufficient wealth to be able to easily attract men should she desire them. If you wish to criticize Rockville, its horrible traffic and overly expensive real estate are the main things you should fit into your couplet.

This is the sort of nerdy analysis that would happen at a lot of Pac-12 schools. Probably not the school at #12 though.

Seal Block Week 4: We're Not in Kansas Anymore

The hardest part of this week's ranking of the Big XII seals was keeping track of which schools are in the Big XII. My most shocking discovery was that this blog has never used an "mst3k" label before.

10. Iowa State
What it's trying to say: The dog ate our original seal.
What it's actually saying: We just didn't give a fuck.

Looks like Kay didn't do so well in her graphic design course.

Seal Block Week 3: Hot Chicks Rule the SEC

As we investigate the officials seals of each conference, we should maintain conference rankings. Due to the sheer WTF-ery at the bottom of the B1G, the ACC is currently in first place, with the B1G in second. This week we tackle the SEC. Due to their superior conference speed, I am filing this report from the Canadian Rockies. Even if SEC partisans are filled with rage, I think their speed will fade by the time they get to Alberta, and they also won't be able to bring their guns with them. As we rank the SEC seals, we're going to set some rules as to what makes a good seal and a good graphic identify in the Internet era.

Seal Block Week 2: The ACC, Where whoredom reigns, but not in Maryland

Hi everybody. After years of being “HSR Correspondent Dave” and e-mailing Craig et al. whenever I thought of something funny, I have been promoted to “HSR Contributor Dave.” Yay me! As I am currently located at the intersection of Penn State’s, West Virginia’s, Virginia Tech’s, and Maryland’s fan bases, my official title now is “Mid-Maryland Contributor Dave.”

After last week’s experiment in ranking the Big Ten schools’ official seals, I’ve decided to make this a season long activity and evaluate the official seals of each FBS team in turn. This week, we take a look at the seals in my current backyard, the ACC. I was going to post this tomorrow night, but for some reason last night ACC graphic design suddenly became a big deal.

The Seals of the B1G: The Results Show

And now, HSR Beltway-ish Correspondent David T. with the results of the Seals of the B1G contest.

12. Ohio State (223 points, mean 3.98, sd 2.13)
What it's trying to say: ???
What it's actually saying: We need remedial drawing lessons.

I finally understand where THE Ohio State University's obsession with the the comes from. Four B1G universities include "The" in their seals, and only OSU sets it apart by using small capitals. They could have just modified the seal instead of saying "THE" every chance they get.

Voter DEK notes: "It's hard to read, is their slogan now 'Discipline is lacking'?"

11. Purdue [5 first-place votes] (256 points, mean 4.57, sd 4.64)
What it's trying to say: We have a modern spin on the idea of the university seal!
What it's actually saying: We developed our modern spin in 1969, so we were taking a lot of drugs when we designed it.

Purdue engineers know their non-Gaussian statistics and thus aren't surprised to see that the standard deviation of their logo's popularity is greater than its mean. About 1/4 of you loved the modern take, but about 1/2 you hated hated hated this seal. In case you're wondering, that's supposed to be a griffin holding a shield.

10. Wisconsin [1] (261 points, mean 4.66, sd 3.30)
What it's trying to say: Our eyes are always open for new knowledge.
What it's actually saying: We must keep Purdue from reaching Mt. Doom and destroying the One Ring.

I had never seen Wisconsin's seal before running the poll. Now I can't unsee it. And I'm afraid it can't unsee me too. The one-first place vote came from Greg S., offering further evidence for my theory that he is actually the Witch-King on Angmar. MLR wants to know if it was designed by a Hall & Oates fan.

9. Nebraska [1] (297 points, mean 5.30, sd 2.99)
What it's trying to say: Look at all the cool stuff we do here!
What it's actually saying: We couldn't think of one symbol that says "university," so we included all of them.

AFLAC trivia question for the first Nebraska-Purdue game: What B1G school's official seal contains a train? Matt Millen will be shocked to learn the answer is Nebraska.

The Nebraska seal is lame in the way that most ads for universities are lame. Instead of focusing on one or two elements to symbolize the university, they crammed everything onto the seal and hoped it worked. Which it didn't.

Voter Emily: "As Coco Chanel once said, a seal should look in the mirror before leaving the house and take one thing off."

8. Minnesota (301 points, mean 5.38, sd 2.09)
What it's trying to say: We've got ALL the arts: science, painting, industry, and woodworking.
What it's actually saying: We don't so much have a seal as we have a scroll that our regents stuck on a wall somewhere.

While voters were really split about Purdue, just about everyone agreed Minnesota (or at least its regents) had the 8th best seal in B1G, with almost 40% of votes putting it 8th place. DEK: "Minnesota's seal, when decrypted, is a map to his Lucky Charms."

7. Indiana [1] (352 points, mean 6.29, sd 3.29)
What it's trying to say: We speak Latin!
What it's actually saying: We don't care much for font design!

Greg S. noted that Indiana has the words "Lux et Veritas" floating around  a book, when they just as easily could have been written in the book itself. @jwschultz writes "Indiana: I'd be proud if you were like a 3-year old university." Voters would have like the seal better if it used a more classical font.

6. Michigan State [6] (379 points, mean 6.77, sd 4.29)
What it's trying to say: We have many lovely buildings on a verdant campus.
What it's actually saying: We have at least one building on a campus that's verdant because our seal is green.

Lots of love/hate on the MSU seal. On the one hand, it's pretty enough. On the other hand, it says nothing about the university other than "Look! A building!" ecormany liked the "great use of Verdana," perhaps sarcastically.

5. Illinois (406 points, mean 7.25, sd 2.49)
What it's trying to say: We have strong agricultural roots and are hardworking Midwestern folk.
What it's actually saying: Our books glow for some reason. (possibly involving Peter Graves)

No university in B1G has a bigger contrast between what it's like today and what its seal claims it's like than Illinois. It's a high-tech university, the place where both HAL and Dippin' Dots were created, but the seal holds fast to its 19th century agrarian roots.

@jwschultz: "Illinois, we are serious about learning and we have dead languages on our emblems. We make up fake Latinized names for our states and we put serious Latin words on the pages of the books in our Seals. You don't get to split "AGRICULTURE" onto two lines; go find a word like "ILLUMINATIO" and you may split it as often as needed."

4. Iowa [1] (408 points, mean 7.29, sd 2.60)
What it's trying to say: We have a hawk. With a bow and arrow. That kicks ass.
What it's actually saying: It's really important you know the exact date we were organized. Unfortunately we didn't keep record of the time.

They didn't have to try very hard to have a better seal than IowaState. Dan TrueBlue says it looks like it belongs more on a dollar bill while Greg S. called it a "rejected tails coin design." Most people seemed to like the clean design.

3. Northwestern [3] (453 points, mean 7.29, sd 2.92)
What it's trying to say: We speak Greek! And Latin! and English!
What it's actually saying: We couldn't decide on a motto. Also, ask about our Sanskrit motto contest.

With three concentric circles of names of mottoes, Northwestern should have 6 official seals for each possible permutation of English, Greek, and Latin. It would be awesome to see Universitas Caurensis or Argestes. As an engineer, I'm fond of our forefather Vitrivius and his northwestern wind names.

2. Penn State [6] (531 points, mean 9.48, sd 3.45)
What it's trying to say: We are a university in the state of Pennsylvania.
What it's actually saying: We were too lazy to come up with our own seal, so we just used the state's.

Nick called the PSU seal "classy" for looking like an actual seal used to actually seal letters in wax. Pennsylvania native DEK was livid that PSU just ripped off the state's official seal - although borrowing the state's official seal can produce some unusual designs, e.g., LSU.

1. Michigan [32] (669 points, mean 11.95, sd 3.73)
What it's trying to say: Lamp of learning, check. Book, check. Rays of light, check. Arts, check. Science, check, Truth, check. That's all you'll ever need in a seal!
What it's actually saying: We're Michigan. We don't need to do anything original to win.

Michigan won this contest for two reasons: 1) This is a Michigan blog. 2) Michigan's graphic identity people were the only ones smart enough to make sure the highest-quality version of the seal got put on Wikipedia.

Bo & Lloyd must like the seal. It's the "three yards & a cloud of dust" of design. The worst thing about it is that you could change the name and colors and it would work for any reputable university.

MVictors linked to the history of the Michigan seal: http://mvictors.com/?p=3144

Many thanks to David for putting this together and thanks to all of you who voted.  We may do another of these in the future, so we're open to suggestions.