Aalto University Brand Guidelines: A 2010 Merger, an Architect’s Name and an A With Punctuation

A merger named after an architect.

Aalto University began operating on 1 January 2010, formed from three older institutions: the Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design Helsinki. English Wikipedia dates those schools to 1849, 1904 and 1871, so the name is new but the teaching behind it is not. The main campus is at Otaniemi in Espoo, roughly 10 kilometres from the centre of Helsinki.

The idea came from the art school. Finnish Wikipedia says its rector, Yrjö Sotamaa, proposed joining the three as an innovation university in a speech opening the academic year in 2005. A planning group reported to the education minister in February 2007, and the government decided to go ahead in November of that year. Working titles included “Innovation University” and “Top University.” Finnish Wikipedia says a jury led by the minister Sari Sarkomaa weighed about 1,600 name suggestions, and on 29 May 2008 the choice was announced: a tribute to Alvar Aalto, the architect and designer, an alumnus of the University of Technology who, English Wikipedia says, designed much of the Otaniemi campus. The first form of the name was Aalto-korkeakoulu; the draft of the new universities law changed it to Aalto-yliopisto.

The legal form was new too. The university is incorporated as the Aalto University Foundation and governed by a seven-member board. English Wikipedia says the law was revised to allow it to collect endowments, and that private donations were matched two and a half times by the state. The charter was signed on 25 June 2008, and Tuula Teeri was chosen as first president that December.

Not everyone agreed. Finnish Wikipedia records concern among smaller universities about fundraising and budgets, and opposition from art students’ unions, which warned that artistic content could be cut. A petition published by the Pro Arte network on 12 April 2007 drew more than 5,000 signatures, and a demonstration was held at Parliament on 23 May 2008. On 13 May 2009 Parliament’s constitutional law committee found the proposed way of choosing the board of a foundation university to be in conflict with the constitution, and the bill was amended.

In April 2012 Times Higher Education quoted the education ministry’s Anita Lehikoinen saying the merger was aimed at “trying something new, combining technology, design and business schools.” In November 2016 the student paper Aviisi reported the findings of Hanna-Mari Aula, who studied the building of Aalto’s reputation between 2005 and 2014: the changes met resistance, and during preparation, she said, “The rectors were practically like traffic lights.”

A letter and three marks.

The logo was chosen by contest. Aalto University Magazine said in April 2020 that the foundation arranged an open design competition and received 117 submissions; the design blog Brand New reported on 1 June 2009 that entry was open to students, staff and alumni from March to April. The winner, named in May 2009, was Rasmus Snabb, a graphic designer and former student of the University of Art and Design, with an entry called Kutsu, or Invitation.

Snabb told the magazine that students did not want “historical or heraldic coats of arms, lions or innovation squiggles,” preferring openness and freedom. His entry spelled out the university’s name with an exclamation mark, a question mark and a quotation mark among the letters. Brand New quoted his reasoning: the logo “doesn’t have a static visual form,” Helvetica was chosen as “the most ‘meaningless’ typeface,” and the primary colours were used because together “they have no symbolic value.”

The reaction was loud. Snabb recalled “a brouhaha both in Finland and internationally,” and said the Aalto community began making its own versions as soon as the winner was published. Brand New’s Armin Vit called the contest “backwards-acting,” disliked Helvetica as “a cliche for neutrality,” and still judged the entry “a pretty well thought out result.”

The design then changed. The magazine reports that a similar visualisation surfaced online and a decision was made to edit the proposal, and Snabb said the original would have been awkward in practice anyway. His simplified version placed the letter A beside the university’s name, followed by one of three punctuation marks. That logo remains in use, the magazine said in 2020, subtly altered over the years, for example by dropping coloured versions. Snabb also handled the university’s wider appearance in its early years as a freelance designer.

The university has explained the punctuation in plain terms. In an interview published by the university network The World 100 in June 2021, president Ilkka Niemelä described “three families of logos,” and said the idea of not having a single static logo was to show Aalto as “very dynamic, multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary.” He also spoke of the letter A taking different colours, which differs from the magazine’s account of coloured versions being dropped.

How newer universities present themselves.

Universities founded after 1950 could not borrow a medieval past, so their identities had to come from somewhere else. In Britain the buildings came first. The writer Michael Beloff chose the word “plateglass” for the new universities of the 1960s, for their modern design and wide expanses of glass in steel or concrete frames, and he wrote of the “grey or biscuit concrete massiveness” of most of their buildings and “the black towers of Essex.” The term set them apart from the Victorian redbrick universities and the ancient ones.

The marks followed a similar line, keeping the idea of a crest while simplifying it. Grafik described the Open University’s 1969 logo as a U with a crest-like structure and a punched-out O, respectful of heraldry while looking ahead. In 2022, campaign material said the same shield had become the starting point for a design system built with accessibility in mind.

Some of these universities reached the public through broadcast before most people could see a campus. The BBC dates the first Open University programme to 3 January 1971, on BBC Two, with academics as presenters and an animated logo and fanfare at the start. That late-night teaching ended in 2006. Monash University’s early fame in Australia came by a different route: Wikipedia says many people first heard of it through its student protests.

This guide follows these universities onto the surfaces where they meet the public: prospectus covers, banners on open days, degree certificates and national campaigns. For each one, it sets out what can be checked about the founding, the name and the identity, and it says who is making each claim, including when the claim comes from the university itself.

A playful mark under firm rules.

The logo began as an open invitation; it is now a protected asset. The university’s brand library page says its logos are registered trademarks and that modifying them is not permitted. Its trademark guidelines list AALTO UNIVERSITY and its language versions, the logo A!, and AALTO itself, registered only for education and research activities. Logos may not be used in party politics, or put on products such as clothing without written permission. The guidelines ask users to take current, unmodified logos from the brand library at brand.aalto.fi, which the School of Arts handbook says covers the visual identity, logos, colours, photos and illustration. The university adds that its design system, published in summer 2023, helps people building digital services stay within the brand.

The institution behind the mark has also been rearranged. Since 2011 it has been organised into six schools, and in 2012 architecture moved in with art and design. Finnish Wikipedia says the proposed English name, School of Arts and Creativity, caused an outcry, and students won the change to School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

The merger then became physical. Aviisi reported in 2016 that the Helsinki campus at Arabianranta was moving to Otaniemi by 2018. The university says the block that holds the Väre building, home of its art and design school, and the School of Business was designed by Verstas Architects, winners of an international competition held in 2012 and 2013; the name refers to a slight movement on water. English Wikipedia says all schools have been based mainly at Otaniemi since 2019, with a bachelor’s programme at Mikkeli and the Metsähovi radio observatory in Kirkkonummi.

For a design guide, Aalto University shows how a new institution can use a logo to raise a question rather than display a past. Compare ETH Zurich, a technical university with a black-on-white logo, and HKUST, a fellow young university that publishes its rules in full. For this guide we use ink black, paper white and muted primaries with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Aalto University’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.