Branding, defining and belonging: Creating an identity for the Engineering Communication Program

In 2010, the Engineering Communication Program (ECP) teamed up with Engineering Strategic Communication to find a visual way to resolve ECP´s identity issues. Not only was the program a kind of outsider to the world of math, hard science and research which were identified with University of Toronto Engineering, but the instructors themselves had a difficult time differentiating themselves from Teaching Assistants. Students did not have a conventional way to identify instructors who taught interactively in small classes scheduled during tutoring times or who tutored in one-on-one or one-on-team settings. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the university had recently completed a branding exercise and was centrally determining what kinds of symbolic representations or typefaces could be used. We wanted to utilize the university new “brand” as well as our own faculty´s in order to represent ourselves visibly as part of the engineering world. Our answer, within what was currently permitted by the university, had two components: a type treatment of our name, matching the type treatments used by engineering departments, and an insignia that introduced an acronym for communication instructors - MyCI. In future, we will be conducting a study to determine the associations the insignia evokes for students.