Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) was seeking a brand evolution, a shift that would better reflect its prestigious history and forward-looking ambitions.
The brand came to life through sketches and coded applications, through trial and error, and by continuing to ask ourselves: Why create a fixed system? Why not invite the community to keep exploring and inventing? Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and board members contributed their points of view to form a totally ownable design language that blends STEM and creativity; one that looks like nothing else but feels unmistakably RPI.
RPI has been sans-serif-forward since the 1800s, long before it was on trend. An engineered sans typeface proved more authentic to RPI's 200-year history than the classical serif typefaces commonly favored throughout academia. While maintaining the prominent presence of RPI's iconic red, a secondary color palette was pulled from the original 1904 seal drawing to add flexibility and another subtle layer of RPI heritage.
As the identity continued to develop, we found ourselves confronting a fundamental question: Why create a fixed system? Why not invite the community to keep exploring, to keep inventing? So as the crux of this new dynamic system, the bar beneath the RPI wordmark became an open part of the identity that people could experiment with, embedding it with their own fresh meaning and vision. As a pattern, it can break free from the logo and take any shape. It can be masked in a circle or distorted with Perin noise generated from a Fibonacci sequence, and altogether it forms a totally ownable design language that blends STEM and creativity.
