When James and I started Populi back in 2007, visual identity was not something we discussed. We knew what we wanted Populi to be—a comprehensive online system that any college could afford—very early on. We also settled on the name Populi pretty quickly, wanting something simple that didn’t try too hard to explain what it was; something we could imbue with meaning through our services and interactions with our customers. I remember thinking at the time that if The Beatles weren’t the greatest band of all time (don’t @ me) we’d all think that was kind of a silly name. Populi seemed like a name that we could define as opposed to it defining us.

So we had a name, and part of what you might call a brand strategy, but we didn’t have a logo in the very early days. Eventually, when we put Populi on the market, we, as one does, needed one. By this time Populi had been acquired by EMSI, and I remember saying something to the in-house designer like, “How about the word Populi with a person shape inside the O.” I chose Lucida Grande as the typeface because that was the Apple system font at the time, and “Apple-like” software was something we aspired to. He produced a bunch of ideas, and I picked one. That was it. Kind of a placeholder, really.

A little while later Populi became independent again, and we just kept pushing forward; improving Populi and trying to bring on enough customers to be sustainable. Our logo was never something we were particularly proud of—we’d sometimes (lovingly) refer to the person-in-the-O mark as “bathroom sign man”—but we were focused on making Populi the best it could be to serve our customers as well as we could.

Fast forward ten years, and we aren’t the same scrappy start up we used to be. Our logo has gone from a kinda goofy placeholder to a reminder of our humble origins to something of a liability. We’d actually achieved a level of acumen (so we’ve been told) at the things we originally set out do, but our visual identity didn’t reflect that. While I've always admired brands that resisted the temptation to rebrand as trends changed, it became clear that our never having gone through the process of establishing a visual identity had become glaringly obvious, and was letting Populi down.

So in 2019, with all those years of experience building Populi into what it is now, we finally set about figuring out how we wanted to present Populi, the brand, to the world. Luckily, we didn’t have to look too far to find someone to guide us through the process. Isaac’s brother JT has extensive experience in brand strategy and identity, and, naturally, already had some familiarity with Populi. After a few conversations, confident that JT understood where we were coming from and where we needed to go, we embarked on a process of refining Populi’s brand and coming up with our new visual identity, our new logo.

We started with a series of discussions with key staff members to identify which of Populi’s attributes are most important to us and our customers, and how to talk about how Populi can help customers to get from where they are to where they want to be. This involved a lot of sticky notes and flash cards, but the upshot is that it helped us all to get on the same page so that JT could begin to develop a visual identity that fit with how our customers see Populi. One advantage to going through this process after so many years was that we all already had more or less the same ideas about what Populi, the brand, represents. This phase went pretty smoothly.

After several weeks, and exploring dozens of concepts, JT presented us with three different takes a new Populi logo. One was the clear front runner from the get-go, but we liked the new shade of cyan proposed from another. After a few rounds of refinements we presented the new logo to the team. Naturally, seeing a radically different design for the first time comes as a bit of a shock, but there was universal agreement that it was a big improvement.

Next, we updated our website and social media accounts with the new logo with plans to publish a story like this one soon afterwards. But instead we all ended up working from home for the next couple of months, and felt like you’d rather we write about things related to online learning for a while. Eventually it really seemed like high time to say something so here we are. We hope you like the new logo as much as we do.

P.S. If you’re using Populi’s old branding anywhere on your website please reach out to Populi Support so we can get you updated images. Thanks!

P.P.S. Want a new Populi “pop” sticker or two? As a reward for making it to the bottom of this post, just fill out this form and we’ll send them your way.

Your Populi courses can now use Zoom, the video communication platform. Zoom lets you conduct live online meetings, webinars, chats, and more.

To use the new integration, your school will need a Zoom account—if you don't have one yet, have a look at their education page or sign up for a paid account here (your school will need, at minimum, the Pro Plan—but you'll likely want to look at one of the education plans). After entering your Zoom credentials in Populi, your faculty will be able to use Zoom via the Course > Conferences view.

With a lot of colleges suddenly needing to consider online learning options, we hope the new integration makes things at least a little easier for our customers to continue serving their students.

Have a look at the Populi Knowledge Base for instructions on how to set up and use the new Zoom integration (as well as our existing BigBlueButton integration).

The word Quarantine is on everyone’s minds nowadays—and everyone’s sorting out what that might mean as many routine things of life are suddenly subject to interruption. In case you were wondering about Populi and whether it would be available, we wanted to take a moment to allay your concerns.

Populi is now, and has always been, one hundred percent set up for remote work. While we do have a headquarters where the majority of our employees have a desk, all of our essential functions are completely online. So, whether or not someone is at the office, they can perform all of their particular duties in the same way.

This means that even if we can’t come to the office for whatever reason (and provided we have internet access) we can still answer your support requests, do training sessions, take your calls, keep tabs on our servers, fix bugs, and share memes with each other.

Things can change, but as far as we can tell, Populi will remain available for everyone at your school amidst the uncertainty of the coming weeks and months.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, or anything else, please reach out to Populi Support.

Amid growing concerns about COVID-19 many schools are moving, or considering moving, classes online. If your school is using Populi, you already have access to a full-fledged online learning management system (LMS), and we’re here to help you make that transition.

To that end, next week we’ll be hosting an online webinar for administrators and faculty members who aren’t yet familiar with, or just want to brush up on Populi’s online learning features. You can sign up for that webinar here. While you’re there you might want to click Follow in the Live Trainings forum so you can stay informed about other sessions.

For now, you can peruse Getting started with your Populi courses in the Populi Knowledge Base.

And, as always, please reach out to Populi Support with any questions or request for training in specific areas.

Coming soon to Populi: Contacts.

Contacts replaces the Admin section of Populi. It contains everything we used to keep there—People, Organizations, Tags, and so on—and you'll come here to add new people and organizations, manage tags and custom fields, and set up ID card templates.

Of course, we've also added a couple new things (and refined a few others). The new People view lets you see and filter through everyone in your system, including reports for GDPR folks and Deleted People. Actions lets you add and remove tags, manage custom fields, email people, and export them. (Organizations get similar features.)

There's also a new Directory with separate views for students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Directory is available to all your users (people without the Staff role will see Directory in place of Contacts); of course, it hides private profiles and contact information from non-Staff users.

We're planning to get Contacts out to you in the next couple weeks. Here's Isaac Grauke and Adam Sentz with a deeper dive into what's coming:

2019 has been a big year for us with a lot of focus on making sure Populi can continue to serve you well for years to come. In addition to the all new Search engine we released recently, the biggest development project of the year was one you probably didn’t notice at all. In 2019, a tremendous amount of effort and attention has gone into the biggest infrastructural upgrade Populi has ever been through; one that is designed to keep Populi humming merrily along as more and more of you use it more and more every day.

Another big push this year was in improving how we communicate with all of you. Key pieces have been ongoing live training webinars, and our new YouTube channel (go smash subscribe!). We’re making sure to keep our social channels up to date so you can keep up with what’s going on with Populi. To that end, please do follow us on whatever channels you like to use. In addition to YouTube, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn.

As always, from everyone here to all of you who made 2019 a great year to work at Populi, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

P.S. Here on the cusp of the next decade, it bears mentioning that a handful of you have been with us since before the start of this one (and a fair few more for very nearly that long). Thank you for taking a chance on us. We hope that we’ve served you well over the past years, and that we’ll continue to do so for many more. It’s not hyperbole to say that we wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for y’all. So, thank you, thank you, thank you.