As a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, I have to put on my RISD hat now and again. Today is one of those days. For what seems like ages, I’ve bothered with a school here in Germany. Specificially, I have been irked by their most-recent rebranding. Today, I saw the school’s name one time too many, so I decided to finally blog about it. What I think was formerly the Design Department of the Fachhochschule Köln has been calling itself the Köln International School of Design for a few years. They also use the abbreviation KISD. I don’t know how long the Rhode Island School of Design has been using been using the acronym “RISD,” it must be at least 60 years by now. The current seal of the Rhode Island School of Design, which features the RISD acronym in a script letter, was designed by John Howard Benson, the noted American calligrapher, stone-carver, and RISD Professor from 1931-56. No matter how you shake it, the Köln International School Design has more than one naming problem… the English word for Köln is Cologne, so even in their title they mix two languages. Adapting the KISD acronym strikes me as a rather cheap dig. Sure, every college everywhere wants to compete with the industry leaders. But it is the students, the professors, the resources, and the work that make an institution great. Copying the name of a successful school from another country just isn’t going to take you anywhere.
Comments
3 responses to “RISD vs. KISD”
In Germany many design schools or departments are giving themselves English names. This development seems rather short-sighted to me – we have a rich history of Design going back to well-known schools of Ulm, Bauhaus and beyond. Why deny this legacy and adopt a name in a foreign language, just to seem more ‘international’?
However it is worthwhile to notice that the KISD has succeeded to get more international awareness, if that is related to their brand or not I cannot say. I don’t think this is related to RISD – ‘school of design’ is a fairly generic acronym, international is an attribute any school likes to give themselves, and using Köln instead of Cologne perhaps just adds the local touch
While the Rhode Islanders love their acronyms, and have RI… everything (it really helps that their state name has two words, and that the second starts with a vowel), and while it is perfectly legitimate to use the English “School of Design” (which is the literal translation of Hochschule für Gestaltung, which even the Bauhaus used when they were in Dessau [American colleges and universities often have the word “school” in their names, depending on their histories]), the RISD and KISD thing is just too much of a “coincidence” for me. Sort of like setting up a big branding/design agency and calling it Haumann and Haumann, or Beta, or Mesa, or whatever!
“Coincidences” can be found elsewhere quite often (not only betwenn near & far eastern product names and genuine western brands) e. g. the film/postproduction agency “Neue Sentimentale” was extremely successfull at the time the online agency “Neue Digitale” was founded ;-)