New brand, same traditions

When the new school year starts, Vestavia Hills High School spirit gear might look a little different.

Following the school board’s approval of new branding for Vestavia Hills High School, new marks and logos will gradually make their way into the school and onto the market. Vestavia Hills City Schools Superintendent Sheila Phillips said how and when the new marks will be implemented depends on the item in question.

“We’re not going through and just changing everything,” she said. “We won’t be ordering anything new with the old logo, so anything new will have the new marks on it. However, if it’s something that we already had that doesn’t make sense to change, then we are going to be very thoughtful as we do that.”

For example, the championship banners in the gymnasium, which bear old logos, will not be changed. Phillips said those are historical markers for the school and will not be affected by the new brand. Something like a tent used at a track meet or the basketball scoring table, however, are easy changes and will be changed to have the new logo.

“It just depends on what it is,” Phillips said. “If it is time to replace a uniform, or if there’s something prominent with the old logo that it makes sense to replace it with the new one, then we’ll make those decisions individually.”

Knight Eady has held meetings with faculty and coaches regarding the new marks, said Katie Jernigan, public relations and digital media coordinator for Knight Eady, and will continue to help coaches order new apparel for fall, winter and spring sports.

“Obviously this is a school, and you can’t make overnight changes with jerseys,” Jernigan said. “It’s going to be as the cycle comes through that it’s time to re-up and get a new jersey that new [marks] start getting integrated.”

Spirit wear will also change in the upcoming school year. Phillips said the school and school board are working with Knight Eady, the marketing team that developed the new brand, to nail down a process for entering licensing agreements and trademarking the new brand.

“We feel a bit of a sense of urgency in getting these requirements down on paper so that we can distribute,” Phillips said. “We have so many people who are already asking, ‘How can I get it? How can I use it?’ We have relationships with vendors in our community and some outside who very much value and want to get those rights to them as quickly as possible for the fall.”

The fine-tuning of those details, however, will not affect the school’s ability to use the new logos. Because the new brand is property of VHHS, the school is able to freely use the new marks for spirit wear, staff attire, uniforms or other spirit items or apparel.

“While merchandisers would have to purchase licensing rights, booster clubs and school teams, anything officially associated with the school doesn’t,” Jernigan said.

Trademarking the VHHS marks helps protect the school’s brand by ensuring all of those symbols are used properly and consistently, Jernigan said.

“There will be specific rules on how they can be [used],” she said. “You couldn’t overlay something over the marks we’ve created, and that’s really the point. It’s not to take away and say you can’t do this, but Vestavia has invested in making their brand and uncovering what is special with their brand, and they should want to protect that.”

This trademark will be stronger than ones previously used by the school, Phillips said, which she said will benefit the school and the school system.

“We learned the hard way that people not even in our state were using our logos to produce any amount of athletic wear, T-shirts, things of that sort,” she said. “This is going to help us provide the protection that we want to for the branding even more succinctly and efficiently than we’ve had previously.”

Building a brand

Knight Eady first entered an agreement with the school board in summer 2015 after the decision was made to step away from the Rebel Man mascot. That decision, Jernigan said, opened an opportunity to rebrand the school.

“From the state, when we talked to them, we said we’re not here just to come up with a new mascot for you,” she said. “We don’t just sit around and come up with some new character or image, we really want to take time to spend, focus on the research and get to know all of the different stakeholders that make up the Vestavia Hills High School brand.”

Students, faculty and other community members were asked questions about what represents the VHHS brand, and Knight Eady researched the school system’s history before developing new marks. Jernigan said the final product worked to emphasize some of the qualities they heard echoed — school spirit, excellence in education and athletics, and tradition.

“With that, we kind of took all of those different characteristics and shaped them into different brand messages,” Jernigan said.

The branding style guide released by Knight Eady in May includes several new marks for the school, each with a specific tie and use in the school. The institutional mark, a red and blue VH that utilizes the modern technique of negative space, is a way to represent a modern take on the VHHS brand.

“They’re rooted in tradition and not afraid to stand up for what they believe in, and that kind of embodies that rebel edge and rebel spirit,” Jernigan said.

The brand also utilizes a quote from VHHS football coach Buddy Anderson, which was used to inspire the 1Rebel mark.

“They’ve changed the wording some,” Anderson said. “It originally said, ‘When you play one Rebel, you play all of us.’ Somehow the wording got changed. I like the original version, but that’s what they chose.”

Using a quote from Anderson was a way to incorporate Vestavia’s tradition into the new brand, Jernigan said. Anderson is a well-known and well-respected member of the community, and his quote captures an iconic part of Vestavia, Phillips said.

“To have that as a secondary mark, 1Rebel, means a great deal to us because of how important he and his leadership are to this school,” Phillips said.

Anderson is entering his 45th year at VHHS and said working to establish a tradition at the school and in the community was one of the best parts of his involvement at the school. While Knight Eady has worked to learn about that tradition and the history of the school, Anderson said it was a difficult task.

“Knight Eady has done a good job as far as trying to go back and research and trying to talk to people, but they weren’t here at the beginning,” he said. “They haven’t seen it evolve, and they tried to sum something up in less than a year’s worth of work of what’s happened over 46 years, and that’s almost impossible to do.”

The decision to get rid of the Rebel Man mascot was one Anderson did not agree with, as he was the one who introduced it in 1978. He said while some people saw the mascot as an evil or bad thing, he and many others never saw it that way.

When Knight Eady considered the possibility of a mascot during their rebranding, Jernigan said the decision to go forward without one stemmed from a focus on positive qualities rather than divisive issues.

“You want to focus on what they do best, so for us, the decision to move forward without one was so that we could focus on what they do best and promote their brand,” Jernigan said. “Not just as some divisive mascot issue, but all the great things they embody.”

Going forward without the Rebel Man as the mascot meant going forward without a mascot to Anderson. He said his support of simply not using a mascot came from a belief that what is inside of Vestavia Hills as a school and as a community is more important than what is portrayed on the outside.

“It goes back to being a family,” he said. “We don’t always agree, but when it comes down to it, we’re a family.”

‘Capturing excellence’

The style guide also includes a formal logo, an Olde English V inspired by baseball and softball logos, specific script work marks and notes on typography. The variety of marks and representation, Phillips said, was an important addition to the Vestavia Hills brand.

“To capture how important it is as a community to have those marks that not only can be used or seen or perceived as athletic, but to capture the excellence that happens in our classrooms and in our academic teams and competitions, that’s unique to Vestavia Hills,” she said.

No matter the logos or marks used, and no matter the difference in opinions that come with the VHHS brand, Anderson said it is important to remember what it truly means to be a Rebel.

“It is as it is. We are still the Vestavia Hills Rebels, and we are a family,” he said. “And there’s a lot more to this high school family than any kind of marks or logos or anything. The heart and effort of the students and the teachers and people here in this school and here in this community.”