Logos, Logos, Oh and a Few Other Things from Our Annual August All-Staff Meeting

Once a month on a Monday, the sports communications office will give a behind-the-scenes look at what’s going on around its area and the department. Today’s look was actually from the Aug. 18, 2014, all-staff meeting held at Speaker’s Auditorium from 3-4:30 p.m. Here is a little of what was talked about:

It’s crazy how fast the summer goes but luckily we have a lot of great staff members who are on the ball, getting things prepped so we can make an easy transition into a new season. And in case you didn’t hear (and I’m not sure how you didn’t), it will also help ease the transition with our new leadership with Charlie Cobb taking over as athletic director. Most of the staff was able to get a few minutes with him on Friday after a potluck lunch that interim AD Bharath Parthasarathy set up, and which everyone greatly enjoyed.

All the great ideas and plans that were put in motion over the past several months (some even stretching back to last fall) were talked about Monday afternoon at our annual all-staff fall orientation meeting. The lineup included comments from Parthasarathy and GSU President Mark Becker, as well as many senior staff members. Some highlights:

• Facilities: There will be a new van in the rotation for teams to use, which is a big boost as some of the older vans need a little love, let’s say. Being able to purchase and add this new van came partially from funding through the Women, Sports & Power Luncheon in the spring that supports women’s athletic teams. There were also potential designs for new facilities (most seen already on GeorgiaStatePAC.com) and some other updates as to potential improvements when funding becomes available.
• PAC: The #PAC2K initiative is under way and off to a strong start. Membership was up 21 percent in 2013-14 with more than $2.17 million raised ($500,000 through annual giving). Some other great numbers are also available in the 2013-14 athletic department annual report, which highlights the successes of the past year.
• Business Operations: There was also a lot of business office stuff that pertained to coaches travel, recruiting and other items like that. I will just say they are necessary procedures that we must go through, but don’t I think you’ll keep reading much more of this if I list them all out.
• Communications: We rolled out a social media policy that helps give the athletic department more connection to and ownership of a team’s page(s), but does not change the way the teams communicate through social media.

And finally, let’s get to the meat of the meeting … or at least what you’re really still reading this for.

• Licensing: Logos.

We had a committee that started meeting last winter to discuss logos on uniforms for all sports. We came to an agreement there were too many logos in use (and for more than just team uniforms), and many of them were not visually appealing or did not reproduce well.

What came out of the meetings in the spring was a recommendation to cut out the logos that had poor visual representation, add the full set of football helmet logos that are possible to use, and to officially add the Panther head as a logo for vendors to utilize. There were also a couple of redundant marks that were removed. And we added a white-only mark that can be used by our teams for practice gear to help save on screen printing costs.

Now, you’ll ask, “What will I see going forward?”

Great question. You will see that as soon as teams begin to buy new uniforms, the logos will fall into what we have on the new logo sheet.  It will NOT mean that we’re throwing out old uniforms this week and buying new ones just so every logo is updated. We do not have the financial ability to do that and that’d be wasteful. But, all coaches and staff are informed and on board with using only the newly approved logos for any new purchases going forward, whether it be next week, next month or next season.

The logo sheet was condensed from two pages to one, and several marks were removed for both internal (team) use as well as external vendors (product sales items, etc.).

Going forward from right now, vendors will only be able to produce items with logos on the new sheet, including the Panther head that we have heard many people really like (personally, I think it’s the best non-word mark we have).

Through our marketing and licensing areas (which are driving the whole logo cleanup both internally as well as externally), we will push the Georgia State primary and word mark as the main logos for uniforms going forward so fans home and away know our proper name. And we’ll also use Georgia State primary or word mark for printed materials as much as possible. There will still be a use for the GSU mark(s), but in a more limited capacity.

It’s a great start to hopefully a great year of Panther Athletics. I hope you’ll join us many times during the season at games and events. If you have any questions, always feel free to contact me at jtrickie@gsu.edu.

—  Jerry Trickie, Associate AD for Strategic Communications/PR