Brand Guide
A great brand is the sum of many parts. Much of our strength comes from those who embody it every day, and consistency in execution is critical to reinforcing our identity.
To support you in telling the USCA story with confidence and consistency, we are pleased to share the new Brand Guide, now available on our university website and through our digital asset management platform, Pickit. This guide is your toolkit for communicating with alumni, staff, prospective and current students, our Aiken community, and stakeholders across the region and nation. Before downloading logos, please take a moment to review the “Using the Logos” guide. This section outlines the do’s and don’ts of logo usage to ensure we all represent USCA with clarity and professionalism. Together, we can keep our brand clean, strong, and unified.
The Brand Guide ensures that anyone communicating on behalf of USCA creates consistent, memorable work that accurately portrays the essence of who we are. These guidelines are not limitations—they are an inspirational starting point for expressing our story. Please remember: university policy requires that all communications follow these standards.
Thank you for being thoughtful stewards of the USCA brand. Your care in using these resources will help us share a clear, consistent, and compelling message about who we are.
The Brand
Who is USCA?
USCA provides exemplary undergraduate and graduate programs of study to students seeking a well-balanced, high value university experience. Our intimate campus, engaged faculty and staff, spirited athletics and active student life organizations create the ideal environment for fostering academic success and personal growth. Located within the charming city of Aiken, S.C., it's easy to see why USCA ranks as a top public institution in the region.
Mission Statement
USCA is a regional public comprehensive university that cultivates a diverse population of engaged citizens who provide lifelong contributions in their careers and communities. Our dedicated faculty, staff, and industry partners guide undergraduate and graduate students through a transformative educational journey that uses engaged, accessible teaching and learning practices to blend the liberal arts, sciences, and professional disciplines with research and experiential opportunities that are aligned with economic and societal needs. We are a center for innovation that serves the region through entrepreneurial partnerships, public service, community leadership, relevant research, educational outreach, the visual and performing arts, and intercollegiate athletics.
Vision Statement
To create a campus community that values each individual, acts as a vibrant hub of activity in our region, partners with government and industry to address societal and economic issues, and transforms undergraduate and graduate students into engaged global citizens.
Our Name
To help our audiences understand that we are not a branch campus or feeder school, moving forward, we’ll refer to ourselves primarily as “USCA” rather than “The University of South Carolina Aiken.” This nuance of language helps us feel like an official, autonomous entity (which we are) and create a distinct nomenclature from The University of South Carolina Columbia. Of course, our full logo will include the entirety of our name, for official purposes. But conversationally, we want to train our audiences to refer to us simply as USCA.
Icon & Logos
Icon
Reflecting the symbiotic relationship of the Aiken community and USCA (after all, it was the people of Aiken who first lobbied for and achieved their vision of a local University), we’ve taken the well-known campus 'Double Knot' sculpture by artist Charles Perry as design inspiration.
The interconnected letters subtly nod to the unified flow of this sculpture, and stacking them two on top of the other helps impress in people's minds the new pronunciation. The design is bold, stable and feels classic—like it could've existed from USCA's inception in the 1960s.
Outside of special use cases, the USCA icon should only be used in red, black, or white. In general, the icon should be accompanied by the full logo on materials developed for external audiences who are unfamiliar with the university. Using the icon alone is best reserved for cases where the brand context is already clear, such as on-campus pageantry.
There are some cases where the USCA letters can be used outside their container shape, but please contact Marketing for further info on those special cases.
Please note, the white icon is not simply a white version of the red and black icons. Instead, the letters are white and there is a white border around the outside. The four letters should always be lighter than their background, to allow the cuts in the letters to have the appearance of shadows.
The letters in the icon should always be white.
Don’t use an icon where the letters are darker than the background. This causes the shadows to look strange.
Primary Logo
The primary logo is comprised of the USCA icon and the wordmark. This mark should be used in most cases.
In the wordmark, keeping the name all the same weight and color helps de-emphasize the "Aiken" portion. This is intended to help correct the current perception that Aiken is merely a branch campus of USC.
Horizontal Logo
This alternate, extended logo can be used in contexts where a wider aspect ratio better fits the context, i.e., a website header or a horizontal banner.