I hold a graduate assistantship in the Department of Food, Nutrition, and Packaging Sciences here at Clemson as a writer and content manager for the website. The department is part of CAFLS (The College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences). In my position, I've created bookmarks and brochures that capture the brand of the Food, Nutrition, and Packaging Sciences department, often assembling a collage of pictures to show the various subject areas in the department.

After reading Chapter 4 of Katz I've been wondering if it would be possible to develop a pictogram for each of the five academic programs in CAFLS. Branding is a necessary element in marketing that attracts newcomers and the logo itself serves as the company's most important asset. Brands raise awareness and also provide identification for people. To my knowledge, departments do not have one single image that is used to represent the entire department. I'm toying with the idea of creating pictograms much like the black-and-white standard symbols and Olympic pictograms. Each pictogram would depict a figure performing an action related to the respective CAFLS department. The most challenging aspect will be deciding which type of information to include in each pictogram, especially considering several different majors make one department. I may have to interview professors from each department to get their take on what information I should convey in each image. I certainly don't expect each department to use the pictograms for their website, newsletters, brochures, etc. because I understand the strict requirements of the Clemson's Brand Policy. At the very least, these pictograms will start a conversation within the departments about creating their own brands.

The five departments of CAFLS are:
School of Agricultural, Forest, and Environmental Sciences
Animal and Veterinary Sciences
Biological Sciences
Food, Nutrition, and Packaging Sciences
Genetics and Biochemistry

Source:
CAFLS Departments: (http://www.clemson.edu/cafls/departments/)