The once lowercase “university” in the Quinnipiac wordmark, or logo, has been changed to “UNIVERSITY.”

In a university statement, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Integrated Communications Keith Rhodes said that after gaining more design knowledge, the branding and strategy team determined that the primary wordmark gave too much weight to the word “university.”

“We are announcing a new ‘Quinnipiac University’ full wordmark that achieves significantly better alignment with our primary wordmark, which simply uses ‘Quinnipiac,’” Rhodes said in a statement. “This new wordmark design structure is also more closely aligned to higher education industry convention — namely how other prestigious institutions apply the word ‘university’ to their primary wordmarks.”

After the lowercase “university” wordmark design was revealed to the Quinnipiac community, the Branding and Strategy team received backlash as the logo became a controversial topic.

Senior marketing major Brett Segelman issued a petition, “Revise the New Quinnipiac University Logo,” with the intent to have to lowercase “university” capitalized. The petition was created in September 2016 to show how many people were unhappy with the logo change.

Now that the university has responded to the feedback, Segelman is voicing his approval.

“I’m pleased with the outcome. It’s a lot more professional. It sends the right message which was exactly what we were going for in the beginning,” Segelman said. “I’m overjoyed to see the change and that it actually happened.”

The purpose of the petition was to get a conversation started within the community; a conversation that would be strong enough to have an impact on the logo. The petition did just that.

“I closed the petition. I declared victory,” Segelman said.

Primarily, the logo will just use “Quinnipiac” but in certain areas where “university” is necessary, the all capital “UNIVERSITY” will be implemented, according to Segelman.

“They can do whatever they want… just use ‘Quinnipiac,’ that’s fine, but if you’re going to have it with the little ‘university…’ that was outrageous, and it was on our homepage forever. People Google ‘Quinnipiac’ and that’s the first thing that see? It’s embarrassing.”

Sophomore biology major Zachary Taylor believes that the new logo accurately portrays what Quinnipiac represents as a university.

“I love [the new wordmark], it’s fantastic,” Taylor said. “I like the original logo a lot better than the one they changed it to. I didn’t think [the old wordmark] was very representative of our school itself.”

Although Segelman is a senior and knows whatever comes from this will not affect him directly, he thinks that the “QU” acronym makes the most sense to describe the university.

“QU is the acronym of the school and that makes sense to people, especially if they’re trying to raise awareness,” Segelman said. “Just putting simply ‘Quinnipiac’ is confusing for a lot of people. It’s hard enough to say as it is. I think it should be ‘Quinnipiac University’ and they should use this new wordmark more. I’m pleased that they actually augmented the original one which was a serious concern of mine as well as everyone else who signed the petition.”

Freshman business undeclared major Carley Wainwright supports the decision of changing the logo again.

“It’s still kind of weird because they’re using two different fonts now that are contrasting each other, but I do support that it’s capitalized,” Wainwright said.

The first thing to realize is that petitions work, according to Segelman.

“I don’t want to take any credit,” Segelman said. “I didn’t do this for me. I did this for our school and they made the right decision. I’m very pleased with it.”

Senior marketing major Isabella Dalena think that the new wordmark is better than the first change made by the university.

“The first change I didn’t like how it was the lowercase ‘u.’ They wanted to make it more Ivy League kind of status from what I’ve heard,” Dalena said. “I think now at least with the all capital ‘university’ it makes it more official.”

Junior computer information systems major Emily Failla likes the change in logo but dislikes that the “Quinnipiac” is bubble-lettered while the “university” is not.

“I wish the two were the same font,” Failla said.