Branding Dilemmas

I'm so sorry it's been a LONG time (four months!) since I have blogged. I got out of the rhythm when I was planning my wedding, and just have not stayed on top of everything since getting married!

I'm working on a number of various things but one larger, more nebulous project that's on my plate has been to work towards building a strong brand for InterVarsity. Branding involves a lot of things that go beyond just a good logo, but as a designer, I am focusing on the visual part of our brand, which does involve our logo and other visual markers of who we are.

To show the scope of what we are dealing with, I did a little research on social media to assess where InterVarsity was at with our brand. I grabbed the logos or images being used by all of our InterVarsity chapters all over the country. Then I compared that with the images being used by chapters of two other large campus ministries - Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) and the Navigators.

Here's what I found. (click on images to view bigger)

Cru:

Navigators:

InterVarsity:

As you can see, InterVarsity has the least consistency across our various chapters' presence on social media. Contrasting it with Cru, which has extremely consistent branding, and Navs, which is less consistent but at least has a recognizable shape/logo that exists across its chapters, I realize that our task is a large one. Something that's particularly challenging for us is that InterVarsity's logo is long and thin:

It is not conducive to the square shape that social media is moving towards. In fact, our current solution for the national InterVarsity Facebook and Twitter accounts is probably not super ideal:

So, I've got a big task ahead! Please pray that God would provide wisdom and insight into how to solve these issues, and that those who hold influence and power in our ministry would be on board with finding good solutions, allowing me to help increase our brand recognition, and hopefully as a result, our impact on campus.