Columbia is well known and widely respected as one of the top academic institutions in the world, conducting path-breaking research in medicine and science, the arts and the humanities—and producing leaders in the professions with a long-standing tradition of public service and civic engagement. We are also a university with a decentralized organizational history that provides a high level of independence among our many schools, institutes, centers, and affiliated organizations. Moreover, a great university is not like a corporate or consumer brand. We are best known for our name and reputation, rather than as a visual mark or logo. For Columbia, then, the challenge of "branding" means providing clear, unified identity standards that allow the many parts of the University to leverage the greatest strength of Columbia's name and reputation in ways that support the mission of each individual unit.
Having a strong University-wide identity that adds to each unit's value while reinforcing the collective value of the institution as a whole has a number of benefits. A clear set of identity design standards:
- provides a single brand that endows all of the University's prestige onto each unit
- limits duplication of effort and resources across the University by minimizing the cost of trademark, design, legal, and other branding expenses
- prevents dilution of the University's brand
- applies the brand management expertise of Columbia's communications professionals across the entire University
- builds a sense of shared identity, community, and pride