35|35 Anniversary Website
This is the fourth installment of a series of 35 moments, milestones, and facts that will be featured throughout the 2013-14 academic year to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
Prior to the 2012-13 season, the Great Lakes Valley Conference embarked on a three-year branding initiative to learn more about its brand and how to better incorporate its mark at its championship events and on its member campuses.
Year One (2012-13) of the branding initiative focused on Introduction & Implementation, which included expanding the conference’s logo library to include both school- and sport-specific GLVC wordmarks, while also retaining the services of D2 Consulting to survey conference athletic directors, senior woman administrators, faculty athletic representatives, sports information directors, and marketing directors on their thoughts about the GLVC brand.
Year Two (2013-14) is currently focused on Championship Enhancements, with the goal of adding one “enhancement” to each sport’s championship, while also updating the conference’s awards and annual trophies.
Year Three (2014-15) will focus on venue signage on all campuses, with the hopes of implementing the GLVC brand in all member school facilities, including basketball courts, football fields, and other competition surfaces.
The three-year branding initiative is a natural progression in the ongoing implementation of the current GLVC logo, which was released on Aug. 18, 2010 in conjunction with the launch of the redesigned conference website, GLVCsports.com. The logo was created by Brad Craig Design Communication of Louisville, Ky., and replaced the previous mark that had first been fully implemented for the 1983-84 academic year. Several variations of the classic mark had been utilized over the past 27 years, which is why it was so important for the league to find a unified identity in the new logo.
The new primary logo was designed to include a circle employed to act as a setting for the dominant wordmark that included a vibrant update to the league’s original colors of blue and green.
Whether by creative evolution or just plain coincidence, an outer ring, the conference’s full name, and both blue and green colors have been used in the league’s four primary marks over the past 35 years.
In the early years of the league, the conference’s full name was often displayed in a blue cursive font next to a three-state map showing the showing the locations of each of the six charter members in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, including Ashland College (now University), Bellarmine College (now University), Indiana Central University (now University of Indianapolis), Indiana State University-Evansville (now University of Southern Indiana), Kentucky Wesleyan College, and Saint Joseph’s College.
Following the addition of Lewis University on April 12, 1981, the GLVC created a circular logo with the words Great Lakes Valley Conference in the outer ring, displayed around a four-state map that now included Illinois.
In a letter to then-GLVC Commissioner Richard Scharf, Don Shafer of Don Shafer Display, Inc., out of Omaha, Neb., proposed the new look stating that “it (was) time for something concrete that all the colleges can use on their stationary, publications, banners, and uniforms.”
In October 1983, the GLVC released a new conference logo and wordmark that both aligned itself with NCAA Division II and discontinued the geographic membership map following the inclusion of Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne (IPFW). The blue-green logo would become the identifying mark of the conference over the next 27 years.
Now with the conference in the midst of its branding initiative, the league office will soon begin incorporating its current logo into several new and existing outlets. A redesign of GLVCsports.com, which will feature the new school- and sport-specific logos while establishing a better connection between the conference office and its member institutions, will debut at the end of the month.
Furthermore, the GLVC will release two versions of a public service announcement the league office created, and begin the implementation of the championship enhancements, starting with the GLVC Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Championships on Oct. 26.
Just like with any branding campaign, the GLVC’s goal is to build recognition with its mark, so no longer must one read “Great Lakes Valley Conference” to know who we are.
Gone are the days where stars in a logo identify where we can be found.
Today, we strive to establish “GLVC” as a badge of honor in the eyes of our schools, while continuing to build a strong brand throughout the region and country as one of the premier NCAA Division II conferences.