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.