Over the summer and autumn, Seattle Pacific adopted a new brand.
Banners across campus and billboards across Seattle now reflect new messages and images highlighting the University’s unique position in higher education. This work is rooted in a campuswide effort to define what it means for SPU to be a Christian university today, in this place. The new messages are grounded in thoughtful, widespread conversation about how to reframe our rich faith history to be relevant and future-facing.
Faith — an important focus of the new brand and one that sets us apart from other universities — has always been central to the University’s mission. Our new messaging highlights SPU’s grounding in historic, Wesleyan tradition as a foundation for lives of faithful commitment to justice and mercy.
SPU’s faith commitment is one of the three pillar messages of our new brand.
The magazine’s organization likewise reflects the centrality of faith. In the old design, we had a regular section titled “Bible and Theology.” In place of that section, you will now find content related to Christian faith scattered throughout the magazine, a visual representation of our belief that faith is not and should not be siloed. Instead, faith permeates every aspect of our lives and our learning.
SPU’s faith commitment is one of the three pillar messages of our new brand. The brand messaging also highlights the importance of academics and the myriad opportunities and challenges afforded by our Seattle location. These three facets of our identity intersect uniquely at Seattle Pacific to influence how students learn and grow during their time here, and the new organization of Response reflects their importance.
In “Home,” you will find short and long news stories and images reflecting the ways that our community is active on campus and around Seattle. In “Soul,” you will find stories of alumni, faculty, staff, and students who are living out the SPU mission near and far — resilient leaders serving a world that needs their talents. These two main sections replace the section titles representing academic departments on campus, reflecting our belief that excellent academic work spans disciplinary boundaries to inform and intersect with every aspect of Seattle Pacific life.
The magazine’s organization likewise reflects the centrality of faith.
Finally, we no longer have a themed feature section. The theme approach provided creative opportunity, but it also limited our focus to one major topic per issue. The new feature section will incorporate an array of topics at the intersection of faith, place, and academics, on campus and off. Feature themes may reappear on occasion, to mark topics of note.
Response took shape in 1975 to provide a report to readers of how the Seattle Pacific community responds to the formative challenges and opportunities of the day. This remains the magazine’s central mission, and I am proud of the way the new design enhances that mission. As always, I’d love to hear from readers about this issue’s content or the changes to our look and focus. Send an email or find SPU on another platform and let me know what you think.
This article originally appeared on page 2 of the Autumn 2018 issue of Response with the headline “Updating our look to enhance the Response message.”
