In connection with this, the student's union will also change its name to Leeds Arts University Student's Union, or LAUSU. As an existing member of the union team, I was approached by the union to help them create a new brand for the union using the name, alongside a few other members of the graphic design course L5 and L6.
During the first meeting, the existing logo was analysed and new styles and colour schemes were debated.
The existing logo has been part of the branding for the SU for the past few years, and while it was successful for the union at the time, it is no longer as relevant. The hand-rendered style type and rustic aesthetic of the logo can very much be associated with a small college. However, the college itself has grown and changed dramatically during that period, expanding workshop facilities, taking on more students and starting to build a new set of facilities that will accomodate two new courses. The college now runs some of the most successful and sought after courses in the country, and the Union would like their new logo to reflect a progressive and strong university and union that will provide opportunities for and support students fully.
The Union would like to create a more solid brand, possibly incorporating both a symbol and a word mark to create a logo that could be used in multiple parts across multiple applications. More specifically they would like to change the logo from a circle, as they have found that a circle shape can be hard to incorporate successfully into posters and banner designs. They would also like the change the colour scheme so that it does not match the rest of the branding currently used by the college, allowing the Union to forge its own unique identity and become a recognisable organisation under the umbrella of Leeds Arts University.
Before the next meeting, each member of the rebrand team and the union will undertake a range of research into existing branding for union university unions and wider logo design. In the next meeting we will pull all of these idea together to create some initial ideas.
Existing Union logo