“We’ve committed ourselves to the following when designing the new image: from the outside, even when you only see a very small part of the university, you’ll have to feel where this university stands for and how special it is. But, it should also be tangible at the campus. At this university, special and fascinating things happen. However, you’ll have to be at the campus, within the buildings, within the programme, before you discover this. If you want to reach your target group with this, you’ll lose at least 35%, because those people won’t ever come that far. Our job was to make that fascinating stuff tangible for the outside world. (…)

Furthermore, this new style has more color. It’s important for the culture of the university to prevent from everyone presenting itself in a straitjacket. The wide collection of shape creates unity in variety. We’re all University of Twente, but we don’t have to present ourselves in a boring uniformity. There’s much more variety and dynamic and that’s important for the university.

The beautiful thing of this new house style is that’s complete different. It isn’t a logo at the top of all your letters (…), we’ve disrecarded all rules, there’s a wide range of shape. The most amazing thing is, when you see it: its University of Twente. The simple logo is a beautiful counterpart for all those shapes.”

Yes, posters and other promotional material will work with the new style. However, everything else will dramatically fail. There should have been put more work in the logo and less in the rest of the promotional material, if it’s a cost issue. I prefer a professional, uniform and clear image above something that can only be justified by terms like ‘unity in variety’. It doesn’t say anything.

“University of Twente. Period.”