"It really baffles me that, all of a sudden, one day, all these people decided to pay attention to the logo of the university system that manages their own specific university, which have logos of their own — which, by the way, are nothing to be graphically proud of — and that there is a sudden admiration of this system’s seal. I have never seen so many people so passionate about a seal. A seal that looks exactly like a hundred other university seals."

— Armin Vit of UnderConsideration's Brand New blog posts a rare follow-up to address the mob outcry this week over the new (actually, year-old) University of California corporate logo and visual identity. As Russ Hopkinson, interactive strategist at Team Detroit also tweeted today,"Has redesign of a known logo ever NOT sparked controversy?"

There are lots of smart folks at the University of California who have brought up tons of innovations that have affected pretty much the rest of the world. In the past week, though, the corporate body that oversees the University of California's campuses has been getting plenty of ill feeling from its nearly 235,000-member student body (and plenty of others) because of one of its latest innovations: a change to its logo.

The logo, created internally by the university's internal marketing team in collaboration with students, consists of a large U with a C at the bottom with “University of California” written at its right. The old logo had much more of a traditional feel with an open book inside a circle and the school’s motto (“Let There Be Light”) and founding year (1868) prominently displayed. But even an extensive branding toolkit and Vimeo video hasn't convinced critics to adopt the new look.

The school claims that the old logo isn’t being ditched completely, the Los Angeles Times reports. It will still appear on diplomas and official letterhead. However, the seal, which was introduced way back in 1910, “does not reproduce well for many Internet uses and that it is often confused with variations created by the 10 individual UC campuses.”Continue reading...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University are joining the ranks of elite universities jumping into the burgeoning MOOCs — massively open online courses — business. The schools' new partnership, dubbed edX, is also spurring the boom in online video education.

Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan recently partnered in Coursera, a commercial company with $16 million in venture capital. 

Beyond academia, the just announced TED-ED website offers customizable tools for educators, while Khan Academy has helped countless students, teachers and parents with its free treasure trove of online videos, offering more than 3,000 tuturials on everything from math to physics.Continue reading...