A massive orange “BGSU” arrived on the Bowling Green State University campus via a flatbed trailer in 2019, a year before seven-foot red “Y” signs popped up at nine locations across Youngstown State University. Heidelberg University in Tiffin installed an eight-foot lowercase “H” soon after.
“✨Insta worthy✨,” read part of a 2023 Instagram post from John Carroll University announcing the arrival of its own set of white letters on the University Heights campus.
The city of Cleveland got a pair of big university abbreviations last year. “CSU” went up in two shades of green on Cleveland State’s campus. The eight-foot letters at Case Western Reserve are blue and gray.
And that’s just a sampling of Ohio’s campuses. From small colleges to large research institutions, these signs serve as backdrops for photo shoots and pit stops on prospective student tours. Campuses nationwide are following suit.
But officials swear it’s more than just a trending photo prop made for the social media era. They say it represents a shift from higher education’s traditional branding playbook as colleges look to become both more accessible in a competitive market – one that includes enrollment and financial challenges – and more welcoming to the communities they call home.
Joseph Master, senior vice president of brand management at the higher education enrollment and marketing firm Carnegie, thinks these signs are one way colleges are inviting the public in “to be a part of a brand story.”
“And higher ed didn’t used to do that,” he said.
Ohio colleges embrace acronyms
There’s no running national list of which institutions have these signs or who originated this exact style. Perhaps there’s a through line between these iterations and the tradition of carving letters into hillsides in western U.S. states.
Brigham Young University students helped install a 380-foot “Y” on a Utah hill back in 1906. People are still making the 2.25-mile round-trip hike to what’s become a beloved campus spot.
The iconic “Hollywood” sign went up in 1923. And tourism bureaus across the country, including in Indianapolis and Cleveland, launched campaigns around oversized script fonts spelling out city names more than a decade ago, around the same time Instagram said it reached 300 million daily active users.
Cities or organizations use these types of signs to help cultivate pride in a place. Colleges didn’t really follow suit, though. Before the COVID-19 pandemic moved so much of campus life online, Carnegie’s Master said these signs probably would have been “a huge branding no-no.”
Now, higher education seems to be evolving from its traditional marketing rules. Master said college leaders frequently ask how to make institutions more human. Loosening the tight branding grip on strictly using official institutional names – often composed of “just so many words,” he said – can be one way to do that.
“Smart institutions are realizing that their brands are strong,” said Master. “The acronym can be seen as additive, rather than at odds with, say, the official logo.”
These signs won’t move any enrollment or graduation needles on their own. But many additive efforts – including embracing campus traditions or places where students naturally hang out – can collectively help colleges create what Master calls a more engaged and connected campus environment.
That’s important. Students involved on campus have higher rates of retention and well-being. Prospective students are taking note of this, too, he said.
“The number one thing that students right now across the nation care about most when they visit a campus are – and you can’t see me doing this, because I’m doing air quotes – are the ‘vibes,’” he said.
Case Western Reserve’s letters already a favorite campus spot
Case Western Reserve is many things, including a top producer of scientific research. But, as an academic institution, “you can’t really put your hands around that,” said Erica Starrfield, the university’s vice president of marketing and communications.
But these installations can be climbed on, stared at, touched. It “allows you to have something physical on your campus,” she said.
Starrfield and her team excitedly watched from the windows as the signs went up in January 2025. Paving the 38-foot concrete base the letters sit on took about three weeks. The installation of the acronym itself, which needed a crane, was completed in two days.
But the process represented the culmination of many decisions leaders made over more than a year.
They had to select who would produce the letters (Wagner Electric Sign Company in Elyria), the sign’s material (steel with aluminum plating) and the location (a busy part of Euclid Avenue to maximize visibility).
She declined to share the cost for the project, one of several recent branding and marketing initiatives.
“We want to define that sense of place and be proud of who we are, both for the people on campus, but also for the community,” said Starrfield.
That pride doesn’t extend to the CWRU corner of Reddit. One user, who said they’re a current student, called the “stupid letters” unnecessary, echoing previous university rebranding campaigns that met mixed reviews.
Starrfield acknowledged that people might have different opinions, but said these letters have a lot of internal support. She said there’s no specific metric of success the university’s team is chasing. Instead, they’re after more qualitative responses.
She spotted long lines near the sign during recent graduation and homecoming celebrations as people waited to take photos, and an unofficial survey of students found more than half picked the letters as their favorite spot to take pictures on campus.
