Blessed by the Potato

UWO has decided to rebrand itself, going from the University of Western Ontario to Western University. And it’s not even April 1st yet. I don’t particularly like the new name; it’s not terrible, but I don’t see the need to change, and it kind of makes me think it’s in the wrong part of the country (shouldn’t “Western University” be in Alberta or something?). UWO had a fair bit of brand recognition under both UWO and Western which was working, so I don’t know why they’d throw away the UWO part. They mention in breaking down the new logo that they’re proud to be in London, and proud to be Canadian… but apparently not so proud to be in Ontario.

Kind of funny, because just a few weeks ago we were making fun of a newspaper article that referred to “Western University” — so perhaps not wrong, just early.

One weird thing is of course that web address — still at the old uwo.ca. I tried going to western.ca, and there’s nothing there. According to the whois, the domain is owned by a HR firm in BC. So the URL will likely be anachronistic now. [update: they did get westernu.ca] They say that the legal name is still the University of Western Ontario, and that’s what will appear on the diplomas.

Anyhow, one upside to leaving (sob, sob) is that I don’t have to go and redo all my powerpoint templates to suit their new branding.