Located in Enschede, Netherlands Universiteit Twente (UT) is a world renown educational institution with a focus on subjects that would make your head explode like behavioral sciences, engineering technology, computer science and nanotechnology among many other areas offering bachelor and graduate degrees as well as PhDs. As part of a €2.2-million expense, UT has redesigned its identity and exchanged its old tagline, “the entrepreneurial university,” for a period.

Located in Enschede, Netherlands Universiteit Twente (UT) is a world renown educational institution with a focus on subjects that would make your head explode like behavioral sciences, engineering technology, computer science and nanotechnology among many other areas offering bachelor and graduate degrees as well as PhDs. As part of a €2.2-million expense, UT has redesigned its identity and exchanged its old tagline, “the entrepreneurial university,” for a period. Courtesy of Studio Dumbar.

Brand animation by buro Knapzak.

The new identity is not the easiest to accept. Two main elements have been removed — the icon and the tagline — and for most people nothing has been given in return, after all, couldn’t just about anyone typeset the university’s name in Univers, add a period, and cash a check? Yes, they sure could. Peppered along with the wordmark is science-inspired flotsam and jetsam, which is the cornerstone of the identity. Again, to many, these might just look like bad clip art or scans of not-so-old science books. In short, most critics of this identity — and, apparently there are many, including students who made this funny video — would be right to express concern.

Studio Dumbar’s strategy director, Tom Dorresteijn, explains the design. In Dutch.

I am predisposed to like anything that comes out of Studio Dumbar, I have admired the work for a very long time, but I’m afraid I can’t get excited about this one. The use of Univers — especially at a point in type design history with so many superb sans serif typefaces — and its all uppercase execution in this case feels extremely dated. More than thirteen years ago, writer and critic Max Bruinsma wrote, “Studio Dumbar’s techniques of three-dimensional typography, staged photography and his generous use of decorative elements like bent lines and dots (coined ‘the measles’ by critics), have been copied to such an extent that his name has become a verb: ‘to dumbar’ means: ‘to be shamelessly decorative’.” As a die-hard fan I had always dismissed those criticisms of their work, but in this identity for UT I can’t deny the measle-like disposition of the visual elements.

In a way, this feels like the penultimate design round of this project, where one more push of the visual language and execution could have yielded something a little more spectacular, more contemporary and more visually contagious than just measles.

Thanks to Jort Braam for the tip.

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A Scientific Identity