Studio Non Troppo

Recently, there was a big scuffle at the university where I work: should the mountain in the logo be blue (as it is currently) or yellow? All sorts of complaints and tomfoolery, made unintentionally comic by several individuals’ use of the “reply all” button to emails that had been sent out to the campus-wide mailing list.

But with all the discussion and gratuitous character assassination, one point was ignored: if a brand is supposed to represent an entity, there has to be an entity to represent. A brand can’t do all the work of standardizing and unifying on its own.

There are many different ideas of what this particular university is, what “its” goals are (which begs the question of what is “it”), and what “its” goals should be, and these different ideas are protean, in flux, none definitively unifying the constituents.

If the brand had been designed to correspond closely to one of those identities, some people would be supportive, and others would dissent, but there would at least be an active correspondence, one that the supportive folks could leverage in their work and that the dissenting folks could rally around and against. But the brand is sufficiently vague so as to avoid choosing sides.

So it doesn’t brand.

To the outside observer, the university’s brand either fails to indicate and represent an identity, or it indicates and represents a failure to create identity.

“Complexity” and “chaos” are commonly used words that have both everyday and technical meanings. In their technical incarnations, both complexity theory and chaos theory deal in part with cases in which it’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen next.

For chaos theory, think “butterfly effect.” Tiny changes in the initial conditions of a system can have (under certain circumstances) immense effects down the line.

For complexity theory, think “network.” A free, viral YouTube video can have a profound effect on the public’s perception of a company in spite of the company’s multimillion dollar advertising budget.

Even if your system is complex (and not all systems are), that doesn’t mean you can determine in advance which YouTube video will go viral, and even if your system is chaotic (and not all systems are), that doesn’t mean you can tell which huge effect the butterfly will have down the line.

When the system you are in is complex or chaotic, you’ve got to get over the idea that you’re going for mastery. Mastery, predictability, and control just don’t stack up in complex or chaotic systems the way they do in other contexts.

Instead, cultivate fluid response and resilience.