VIRGINIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION LOGO

GOALS – The Alumni Association logo was in dire need of a revision that would make it clean, elegant, modern, scalable, and easily reproduced.

EXECUTION

1. Conceptualization
   A logo for the Alumni Association had been created and rolled out before I began working as the Communications Director. In addition to a number of design problems, the logo was also a continuing source of printing and reproduction errors. The building was not in vector, the gradient on "for life" often misprinted, and it was overstuffed with text elements. I quickly began the process of revising the logo.
2. Design
   The design was done entirely by me. An internal committee had worked on the logo in the past, and so I came up with a few concepts and gave a presentation on principles of logo design - something that had never been done for the group. After meeting with the committe and then our VP, it became clear that "Virginia Tech for life" was crucial text, and a representation of the Holtzman Alumni Center clock tower had to be included in some way.
   
3. Tools 
   The logo was created in Illustrator. 
   
4. Creativity  
   Our logo goes on everything, so I viewed this project as critical. I was able to convince a committee of people to change something they had all recently decided to do, as well as work with our VP to address his concerns while also staying true to my vision of the redesign.

EVALUATION – We've had the logo in place since April 2011. The new logo has removed all the issues we had with printing the old logo. I also think the quality of the design elevates the image of the Alumni Association. The simplified logo resulted in easily iterating the logo so that we have a reverse version and a vertical version. For extremely small printing, we have a version without the clock tower art.