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LYIT
Ever since its days as the Regional Technical College, the Letterkenny Institute of Technology has played an enormous role in the economic and social life of Ireland’s Northwest. But for those who knew Letterkenny in its RTC phase the current Institute is almost unrecognisable – state-of-the-art facilities, new degree options, expanded programmes, a greater focus on students, and hugely adventurous goals for the future have fundamentally altered the Institute’s profile. A merger with the College of Tourism and Catering in Killybegs even threw into question the geographic cornerstone of the Institute’s existing name and logo.

It is human nature to struggle with change, to worry about losing something you value before embracing the new opportunities that open up. Sometimes the design process needs to provide continuity and act as a bridge between the old and the new. This holds especially true when that design is necessarily invested with a significant sense of place and people.

In developing a new visual identity for Letterkenny we wanted to comfortably acknowledge the past while firmly looking to the future. The geographic bias of the logo was tackled by replacing Letterkenny with the less specific LYIT. Sure, everybody already called it that anyway. Picking up on the tradition of using the Donegal countryside as the basis for a mark – two previous logo designs had already done this – we developed a series of highly abstract landscapes, overlapping and converging perspectives that express the diversity of lives, opinions, and ambitions that define the academic experience. We view it is a convergence of past and future that provides LYIT with the robust communications framework it needs to achieve its ambitious goals.