The Bar is on the floor: RPI’s rebrand is not good

Those returning to RPI this fall may have noticed several changes to campus facilities completed over the summer. The Grill in Commons has been renamed “Sizzle”. The shop on the bottom floor of the JEC has replaced its blueprint-patterned walls with a clean off-white. The Rensselaer Union now contains a long-sought-after Pre-Function Lounge. Possibly the most expensive change on campus, however, could be seen by students and faculty long before they arrived: RPI is sporting a brand new logo. Freshmen can already see the new look on RPI’s home page, on Duo’s two-factor authentication system, and as part of their new class photo. Indeed, the future class of 2030, and even current members of ’29, have a decent shot at knowing the old logo as just part of RPI’s long history, akin to the retired Red Hawk mascot of the ’90s. This is why, as crotchety old upperclassmen, we have a duty to make our grievances known now.

The main gripe many have is that the modernization of the logo does not align with the branding and reputation the school has already built since the late 1990s. Just last year, the school celebrated its 200th anniversary and reminded everyone with great pride that RPI is the oldest polytechnic institute in the US. Much of the school’s prestige comes from its long history and established roots in engineering and the sciences. From the Rensselaer School, to the Institute, then the first Polytechnic Institute in the United States, RPI was established well before The Great Fire of 1910 destroyed our campus. However, RPI rising from the ashes of the tragedy gave it the stamp of a formidable institution. In fact, the seal in the 1920s was such a mark of respect that it was considered an act of defiance to don it before one got their degree.

The switch from Rensselaer to RPI may lose some elegance and recognizability, but there are some obvious perks. A glaring problem with Rensselaer as the logotype is the length. Combined with the seal as the logomark, it’s clear that the old logo suffered from some scalability issues. If you make the logo too big, it may be difficult to fit the entirety of “Rensselaer”, but if you make the logo too small, the seal loses detail and is hard to make out. Using “RPI” does not lead to the same issues; however, the scalability issue was not fully resolved. In its base form with “RPI” and the solid bar, the scaling is fine, but if people want to take advantage of what the bar stands for, being able to encapsulate any design, then the scaling issue returns. The bar is a callback to the 1904 seal’s surveyor’s stick—an effort to reunite with the grassroots of the school’s identity as a true technical institution. However, the examples of different bars shown by RPI so far have been intricate, technically meaningless designs that, when scaled down, are unrecognizable or just look like the solid bar again, defeating its whole purpose.

Another misstep in the rebrand is the move away from referring to the institute as “Rensselaer”, instead doubling down on using “RPI” in all official branding and communications. While the rebrand team is correct in thinking that we need more consistency in how RPI refers to itself, we ourselves are sick of calling the school “Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute” in conversation when people are unfamiliar with the acronym—shying away from the founder’s name feels like a copout. There are plenty of tech schools that refer to themselves with a three-letter acronym: WPI, RIT, and MIT, to name a few. Having a “Rensselaer Union” instead of an “RPI Union”, for example, allows us to stand out from a sea of other universities also trying to “bring creativity, science, and technology together to address society’s greatest challenges.” Without that, we have to keep reminding everyone that “no, we’re not the one in Rochester.”

RPI, in a sense, was the trailblazer for the three-letter-acronymed tech schools. From the 1920s to the 80s, the RPI logo was just the letters enclosed within a circle—direct, clean, and recognizable at the time. That, paired with the seal to empower “knowledge and thoroughness” and the classic, noticeable, and slightly quirky “cherry and white” combination, was the essence of RPI in the 20th century. This is the RPI that most alumni remember, where they worked for their hard-earned degrees, and what had remained intact for decades before the administration under Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson made the pivot to the seal and “Rensselaer”. So, this shift back to RPI also feels directed to alumni, an homage to their patronage: those who have money to give the school but have been wary of anything to come out of the old administration.

Ultimately, this new logo encapsulates a timidity in RPI’s approach to branding. The Institute does need a better public image—we’re tired of others knowing our school as a campground for smelly, antisocial computer science students. But what the new rebrand has shown us so far feels like no image at all, outside of “generic tech school”. While we believe that the logo and “The Bar” will eventually find a place in RPI’s identity, it’s clearly off to a rocky start.

For more information from RPI, look at their branding website here: https://brand.rpi.edu/document/4