tasteless logo-lacking products in the Waterloo Store

[cnst]

I'm amazed how the Waterloo Store is full of products that carry neither the old nor the new official look of the universitySpecifically, I was looking for a number plate holder, and they had two options with "University of Waterloo": one plastic holder with the old styled font, and a new metal holder with the text set in a random font saying "

Comments

[anonymous]

The new look is literally gotham text (sorta plain and unrecognizable in small sizes like on a license plate holder) and that's it.

The embellishments like "lasers" wouldn't fit well I think so realy, it's pretty plain.

Anyways, I've been perplexed at the University's merchandising. Their identity strategy (which has all of a sudden been brought to public scrutiny because of the new identity debacle) is directionless.

Their best sellers I bet are the $10 t-shirts which are literally just text on a shirt. The other $10 shirts and $20 sold at the SLC every now and then are cheap catalogue designs that the university probably makes tons of money off of. The rest of their merchandise looks like they flipped through a corporate merchandise catalogue and chose which cookie-cutter product might sell the best.

Everything's cookie cutter and there's a fragmented school and athletics identity. I'm sure a lot of schools have the same approach (pick and choose out of a catalogue) but at least they strive to, you know, put their logo and colours on it.

There's lots of ways to improve retail services, but I'm sure they're making as much money as they want so it won't change

[cnst]

Yes, exactly - Gotham typeface. That's what I'm asking for the lettering on the licence plate holder to be; it surely is going to be much more recognisable than some random san serif typeface.

Indeed, the strategy with University merchandising is upsetting. I was looking at their t-shirts in the store, and that t-shirt that has "University of Waterloo" in full length underneath another "Waterloo" in full length just looks really stupid. The DRC SCS red sweater shirts are quite nice, though, but it's not available for sale from Waterloo Store (I got one or two from volunteering).