Design guidelines (Corporate Design)

As a university, we want to appear self-confident in the competition for bright minds and resources. To be a brand. And we want to convey this in our corporate design. In a design that allows the greatest possible creative freedom for all those involved and yet is not arbitrary. A design that reflects the diversity at the University of Erfurt and yet gives it a framework. One that is easy to use and refined in expression. Contemporary and unmistakable. An appearance that is serious. And yet fun. A great task with which we have entrusted Franziska Walther from the graphic design office "Sehen ist Gold" from Hamburg with the task in 2018, and with her Anka Suckow, who has accompanied us in the process as a coach and mediator.

The challenge was to make the diversity of the University of Erfurt, its faculties and institutions and also its people visible without losing sight of the big picture - in other words, to create a visual constant within the diversity of the brand presence. This is why the new brand architecture presents the individual faculties and institutions uniformly under one umbrella brand, but still offers the opportunity to become visible as part of the university with its own logo variant.

For our relaunch, we enlisted the support of Franziska Walther from the "Sehen ist Gold®" design studio and Anka Suckow, who accompanied the CD process as coach and brand strategist.

In an interview we introduce the "makers" of the new corporate design.

The logos of the faculties and scientific institutions as well as the central university logo are available for download in ZIP-folders in different sizes (01 = small, 02 = large) (.jpg as image, .png with transparent background, .eps for print products)

ZIP-folder Logo ErfurtLab
ZIP-folder Logo Faculty of Education
ZIP-folder Logo Erfurt School of Education
ZIP-folder Logo Gotha Research Library
ZIP-folder Logo Forschungskolleg "Transkulturelle Studien / Sammlung Perthes"
ZIP-folder Logo Gotha Research Centre
ZIP-folder Logo "Campus Gotha"

ZIP-folder Logo Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour
ZIP-folder Logo International Office
ZIP-folder Logo Faculty of Catholic THeology
ZIP-folder Logo Max Weber Kolleg
ZIP-folder Logo Faculty of Philosophy
ZIP-folder Logo language centre
ZIP-folder Logo Faculty of Economics, Law and Social Sciences
ZIP-Ordner Logo University of Erfurt
ZIP-folder Logo Erfurt University Library
ZIP-folder Logo URMZ
ZIP-folder Logo Willy Brandt School

To ensure legibility, certain minimum sizes should be observed when using the logo. The width of the word mark, which may not be less than 15 mm, serves as a guide. From a word mark width of 30 mm a subline (faculty/academic institution) can be included. In smaller variants, the naming must be omitted.

Note: Alternative variants are available for applications in which the logo must be used e.g. very small (e.g. on ballpoint pens or similar), inverted or in one colour. In these exceptional cases, please contact the University Communication Office. Overview of alternative variants of the logo (pdf)

overview of alternative variants of the logo (pdf)

As before, the University Communication Department takes care of the central print products of the university - the course flyer, campus booklet, business papers, website etc. Furthermore, we offer the logos for download. We also offer support with templates, e.g. for posters and notices or PowerPoint presentations, which enable you to implement your own design wishes. We further develop these templates according to your needs or constantly add new variants to the option catalogue.

In addition, we would like to develop an online tool with which you will be able to design posters and notices even more individually yourself in the future and to add your own images - a tool that also creates print data for the print shop. We are currently in talks with potential developers.

For external (design) service providers, the university communication department will make the new design manual available on request.

The faculties, the Max Weber Kolleg (as before) and now also the scientific institutions, i.e. the Gotha Research Library, the Gotha Research Centre, the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection, the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, the Erfurt School of Education, the Instutute for Planetary Health Behaviour and the ErfurtLab have their own logo.

Secondary logos are no longer planned - ESE, Brandt School, Gotha Research Centre and Gotha Research Library, which previously had their own or secondary logos, now have their own variant of the new logo. Project logos, however, will be treated in the same way as the logos of cooperation partners, for example on the back of a flyer or in one line at the bottom of a poster or notice.

Yes, the new logo is so flexible - it already thinks into the future and can adapt flexibly to new circumstances and needs. This is a great strength of our new corporate design.

The Max Weber Kolleg and the faculties will retain their previous colours - with the exception of the Faculty of Political Science, which has been given a new colour at its own request. In the future, the academic institutions will also wear a colour that we have selected from a colour canon that matches the other colours.

The University of Erfurt has chosen the "Noto" typeface family as its new corporate typeface - firstly, because it is available to everyone free of charge as a license-free font and can be used on both Mac and Windows computers. On the other hand, however, it also offers very extensive weights - including Cyrillic letters, Arabic characters and even emojis. All these cuts are basically available to you. However, so that you don't lose track in everyday life, please use Noto Serif as a serif font and Noto Sans as a sans serif font. Both types are available in regular; bold; italic; and bold-italic. In the templates for letter, Power Point presentations, posters and announcements, the respective fonts are already predefined and this will also be the case on the future website. For other applications (digital or print products), please use the font style that you consider most suitable in terms of readability. If you are unsure, please contact the university communication department.

We started off with a vision meeting with the Presidium. What is the mandate for the designers, where do we as a university want to go, who do we want to be, how do we see ourselves, how are we perceived by others - these were questions that we discussed here with the university management. At the same time, we spoke with representatives of the faculties and institutions - to clarify our brand identity in the first place. In addition, we asked: What is important to you about your image? What do you need to identify with the brand Uni Erfurt? What do you need for uncomplicated handling?

We then formed a working group with representatives from faculties, institutions and administration, which, together with our graphics office, developed the brand "University of Erfurt", which was finally translated into a graphic solution. In the process, the working group checked again and again whether what had been worked out really fitted in with the "vision", the brand core of the university. In this way, we all went down a path together that connects, and which over time has turned many individual perspectives into an overall perspective.

On our intranet pages we also kept a kind of "diary" in which we regularly provided information on the state of affairs. And there was also a regular "update" in the Newsletter of the head of administration.

In our experience, the path - i.e. the process leading to the brand - is as important as the goal, the final design. If you develop a new brand for a university, the process design towards the brand becomes even more elementary. By nature, universities are places where discourse is held. Research only begins where discourse is possible. And that is why colleagues with very controversial positions often act here. This diversity had to be represented in the new brand without standardizing it. And to invite all those involved to follow this path together. In order to do justice to this task, we brought on board Anka Suckow as brand process expert and mediator in addition to our designer, so that we can master the path to the brand as a team in the best possible way.

In our "brand essence process", we let participants from all interest groups have their say, in order to then bring together what they have learned in a working group on a central theme, the "soul" of the organisation, so to speak. So no one from outside determined what the university stands for, but we "peeled it out" together from all the contributions. This was incredibly important for credibility. In the end, we were in complete agreement when we evaluated the design drafts. Anyone who has experienced classic design processes knows that this is a rarity.

At first we looked around a little: Which images of other universities or scientific institutions do we like and why? And who were the designers here? We discussed what a new corporate design must achieve for us and how we imagine working with an agency or a graphic design office. And we asked for recommendations in the scientific environment. This resulted in a whole range of potential providers, whom we finally asked to participate in our tendering procedure. We then held briefing discussions with the three - also from an economic point of view - most interesting suppliers and then invited them to a pitch. We took a look at them: Which of the three understood our request best, who came up with the most interesting approach, who set the right chemistry for good cooperation, and so on.

The result was close, so we had "a good nose" right from the start, but in the end, "Sehen ist Gold®" convinced us the most. Above all with the idea of bringing a kind of "coach" into the process from the very beginning - someone who helps us find our brand core, someone who mediates when the process comes to a standstill, someone who, as an observer, perceives vibrations early on and gives feedback - something that Anka Suckow did wonderfully and which contributed to an incredibly good working atmosphere. This was particularly helpful in formulating our brand core, the essence of what makes Erfurt University what it is.

The University Communication Office works intensively to update all print and online products of the university as quickly as possible. A lot has already been converted, but given the abundance of material, we will of course have to do the rollout step by step. First of all, the materials with the greatest visibility will be used. Until everything is converted, we use the old materials, so you don't have to throw them away now.

Yes, alternatives are available for special cases, for example for:

• the website (logo sits space-saving and rectangular directly in the upper left corner);
• social media (favicon / icon);
• business cards (logo sits space-savingly and at right angles directly in the upper left corner);
• inverted variants for placement on black background;
• monochrome variants (e.g. for engraving) and
• solutions for printing below the minimum logo size of 16 mm

overview alternative variants of the logo

You can obtain these logo variants on request from the office of University Communication.