Blue out as secondary SU color

Changeover will not affect athletic teams

By: Chelsea Prince

Posted: 11/15/07

Syracuse University's signature orange and blue look has gone stale.

"We are the orange - we don't want to be the blue," said Nicci Brown, associate vice president for marketing and communications. "We are known as the orange, and we need to project that out a little more than what we have been doing."

Orange is the only official color of the university. To accent orange, blue has been considered the right hand of the university color system for more than 100 years, even before orange was considered a representative color for the university. Now, it appears that blue is fading away.

Many people noticed the color discrepancies after the Nov. 2 kickoff of the $1 billion campaign, as SU unveiled a new team of orange-only propaganda.

Additionally, the university's Web site underwent a recent facelift. The site now includes appealing graphics of the future Connective Corridor project, new fonts and placement adjustment. A burnt orange hue contrasts the fiery citrus color throughout the page.

Blue remains absent.

"I will say that it was a very conscious effort to focus on the color orange as SU can be associated with orange more than any other university in the country," Brown said.

However, this is not a push for elimination of blue, said Vice Chancellor Eric Spina. Syracuse will still see the same orange and blue tandem.

"Orange is clearly the emphasis, but blue will continue to be seen as the primary accent," Spina said.

The university seal has historically accented orange with white, while blue appears on most athletic wear, and these will be used at the same frequency, Spina said.

The SU Athletic Department will not be affected, said Sue Edson, assistant director of athletics for communications.

One glance at the SU fields and athletic merchandise conclude that blue is here to stay.

"But if people come here based on color, then this is the wrong school," Edson said. She added there is a push to mainstream the color orange, since it is the only official school color.

The university switched its sports teams name from Orangemen and Orangewomen to the Orange in 2004.

Uniforms change all the time, Edson said. Most of the uniforms are ordered significantly in advance, and they are still threaded with blue.

"At the athletics department, there have not been discussions about removing the color blue," Edson said. "Nobody has said a word, and it has been 10 days since the campaign kickoff."

What students and alumni see marketed today is just a tweak in comparison with what the university has planned for the future. The new Web site homepage was the first of a series of efforts to add more orange and "freshen" the look of the site, Brown said.

The SU Web site hasn't actually been redesigned - yet. A redesign will take a bit longer, with more collaborative efforts from numerous audiences. A new Web site will launch in late spring, Brown said.

"It had that same look for quite a few years, and we wanted to get that done sooner than later," Brown said.

Blue is an accent color that has been used to varying degrees, and it was not used on the Web site because blue and orange are at opposite ends of the color spectrum. Brown said she and others decided to use dark shades of orange on a white background instead.

"There are more people using the Internet and our Web site, so we aimed at reading legibility," Brown said. "All age groups go there now, and we want people to understand the visions of scholarship in action."

As far as alumni are concerned, mum's the word. The Office of Alumni Relations has not received any criticism about the Web site and other color adjustments.

"We suspect they like it, but from what I understand, this is just temporary. We haven't received any feedback, but we think it is a step. It was time for a change," said administrative assistant Monique Frost.

Alumni are not nitpicky about SU color schemes, Frost said. "I really don't think that the blue is forever eliminated from the Web site. It will change again," Frost said.

Every time change is instilled there is bound to be a positive and negative reaction, Brown said. Similarly, if change doesn't happen, there are also positive and negative reactions.

People grew accustomed to certain images of SU, which started to seep in. These images were sometimes so overpoweringly blue that the school's only official color - orange - was limited, Brown said.

"It's an attempt to reinforce the notion that we are orange. We are proud, and we want to project our identity," Brown said.

Orange suddenly commanded more attention due to new campaigns that market orange as a distinguishing factor, and graphic designers use a color palette that solely includes orange and its neighboring tones, Spina said.

Schools within SU, such as the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, reflect their own color choices to distinguish themselves from orange. Maxwell adopted ivy green to represent the school, with brushes of sunglow yellow.

The university has not received any complaints about any of these color schemes, either on campus or externally. Students are receiving mixed messages and meeting them with mixed reactions, as the frequency of the color blue has undulated.

"Orange is such a bright color that some people want that extra color to neutralize it a bit. For that reason, I don't think blue would ever go out of the color scheme," said junior Andres Patino, who works at the University Bookstore.

The athletics department just released a new alternate basketball jersey that is predominately blue, but new streams of merchandise with gray accents and vintage washes are also flowing into the retail lines, Patino said.

Despite changes, orange is still the color people want to see in the student section at sports events, Patino said.

"We have received terrific feedback and thus far we are feeling really good about it," Brown, associate vice president and Web page developer, said.

"As we go forward, we have been doing interviews with current students, faculty, alumni and staff members because we want to make sure that the functionality serves as many of our audiences as well as it can," Brown said.