I would like to request that someone exchange a font, please.
Not a complete logo, mind you, just the typeface.
A few weeks ago while in Columbus, Ohio, I attended an MLS game between the hometown Columbus Crew and the New York City FC. Luckily I had my black and gold running shoes on the trip so I felt in sync with the home crowd. Which was good because it would have been nigh impossible to purchase any additional black and gold Crew gear at the stadium since there were huge lines out of the Crew SC Shop all night long. In case you’re not aware, soccer merchandising is big business.
One of the primary sponsors – and the “Official Healthcare Provider” of Columbus Crew SC – is OhioHealth. OhioHealth is a not-for-profit, faith-based system of hospitals and healthcare providers in and around Columbus, Ohio. It consists of 17 hospitals, 21,000 physicians, associates and volunteers, and more than $2 billion in net revenue. It is NOT, however, associated with the major state university, whose name I won’t mention, which also resides in Columbus. If it was, that would only make my request even more compelling. I believe, however, that you’ll agree it’s still reasonable.
As a primary sponsor of the Columbus Crew, OhioHealth’s logo is displayed in several highly visible locations around the stadium. But as I looked at the logo, something seemed very familiar about the lettering. It reminded me of the PennState and PennState Health logos. And when I got back to the hotel and searched for the logos online, I discovered I was right.
If you look closely at the word “Health” in each logo you can see very slight variations in the letters – not counting the different shades of blue. But you have to look closely – if you just give them a cursory glance they look like the same font.
Under normal circumstances this sort of font similarity wouldn’t be cause for someone to request an exchange. Each day we are bombarded by type on our computers, in reading material, and everywhere else we look. The vast majority of this type being either a standard serifed font such as Times New Roman, Georgia, or Garamond, or a sans-serifed font such as Arial, Calibri, or Century Gothic.
As I learned at Penn State in winter term 1980 in my Art 271 class, “Typography,” you can teach an entire course about fonts by focusing on as little as five typefaces. Once you’ve decide if the font you’ll use will have a serif or not – serifs being the stroke that projects from the top or bottom of the main stroke of the letter, which originated with Roman masons who terminated each stroke in a slab of stone to correct the uneven appearance made by their tools – the only differences in most fonts are the variations in thickness and angle of the strokes of the letters. So there are likely plenty of other businesses out there using a similar font to this one.
Except, plenty of other businesses aren’t multi-billion dollar entities in the same industry in bordering states with a geographic component to their names. PennState Health and OhioHealth. And in this case PennState Health came in second. Maybe an exchange is a reasonable request?
A little history is in order.
In August of 2015, Penn State announced it was time for a brand refresh of its academic visual identity – in other words, the Penn State logo in use since the 1980s needed an update. One of the reasons given for the timing of the refresh was that “the formation of Penn State Health was an immediate catalyst for change.” This new refreshed identity would be used, in part, to unify Penn State Health with Penn State.
A highly respected design firm was chosen to do this refresh. They had done outstanding work with a number of major corporations including Cigna, Cisco and the World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund).
The result of this “refresh” can be seen below in its standard iteration and in its PennState Health iteration. The marketing announcements noted that this change: continued the heritage of the Nittany Lion; had the same sense of stature as the sculpture; the subtle curve at the top of the shield was more visually appealing; and the name included a bold and distinctive custom serif typeface.
When it was unveiled, the new brand underwent some criticism from Penn Staters around the country. This is to be expected with any logo change, and especially one with as involved and vocal a constituency as Penn State – home of the largest dues-paying alumni association in the world. In addition, President Eric Barron was no stranger to this sort of reaction, having been president of Florida State University when they made changes to their beloved Seminole logo.
As time passed from the date of the announcement the new brand identity has been incorporated into all academic aspects of Penn State (thankfully not the cherished chipmunk-head athletics icon though), the criticism has abated, and business as usual continues.
ButI look back at the last item on the marketing list promoting the new brand – that the name includes a “distinctive custom” serif typeface, and wonder, how distinctive and custom could it be if OhioHealth has a serif typeface that is almost identical and was in place before PennState Health?
Which brings me back to my original request. If it’s not too late I wonder if someone could exchange a font, please?
