I am lucky that I work for such a large institution in Brooklyn College. Brooklyn College has its own in-house design team, and they have a lot of resources. Brooklyn college produces its own stock photography, and manages all of their own assets in house. The rules around the use of specific photos and logos is very clear and deliberate. The funny thing about this is that I don’t work for this team, I work for the office of institutional assessment.
I bring this up because there was a project that I wanted to use the Brooklyn College logo on, and even though I was provided a brand standards kit, I noticed the logo was absent. When I asked my internship coordinator about it’s absence, I was told that the design department is territorial in regards to the official logo. In some way I can understand this because as interns we are learning the ropes and putting the college’s official logo on something is like putting an official stamp on it. You don’t want to legitimize a bad design or create opportunities for the logo to be mishandled. Regardless, we managed to secure a few copies of the logo through back channels and have used it in some communications.
The good thing about this internship is that I haven’t had to sign an NDA. This means that any work I produce gets to be shown in my portfolio without the need for passwords, and or future permissions.
