On the Tuesday, Oct. 11 student senate meeting, Karen Martin, a representative of the marketing and communications for the university, discussed with the senators about a possible redesign of the font used for Ashland University and a possible motto change. 

They have been working with their primary advertising agency, Vinyl Marketing, in downtown Ashland for a year on this project.  

This includes refining the way our design represents the university which can include everything from colors, logos, typefaces, or anything that can be used as a piece to represent. 

Vinyl Marketing did research and focus groups with students, staff and alumni to see what best represents the university and they gathered information that way.   

They plan for the new motto to focus on character when compared to other schools in Ohio which tend to focus on the school itself. 

“What we are trying to do is visually represent as close to the true identity of AU as we can in a way that is timeless, consistent, appealing and different from our competitors,” said Martin.  

Martin handed out feedback sheets for the senators to fill out which had spaces left for them to leave comments and fill out which one represents AU better.  

Later she opened a discussion with the senators concerning any questions or thoughts they had after going over the sheet together.  

On budget matters with the redesign, the work that has been done for the past year, the agency has donated that to the university, so there have not been any expenses to AU.  

It’s unclear when the students or staff will be notified of this change, but it is assumed that the marketing team will come to a decision soon and will notify the school.  

Student senate meetings are hosted in the ABCD conference room in the Hawkins-Conard Student Center every Tuesday at 9:30 p.m.