What Happens When Everyone Gets Their Own Logos

One of the hats I wear on campus is oversight of Marketing & Communications. Like most campuses we have a style guide and a set of web standards, which discourages you from creating your own logo and putting it on the web along with the campus logo.

Creating a logo is fun, and no matter what your campus logo is, there are some who will hate it and want to use something different. (Usually people want to use the old logo, which of course was once the new logo and was hated, often by the same people.) I get it, I really do, but if you want to see what a web page looks like when everyone gets their own logo, take a look:

Welcome to https://goes-app.cbp.dhs.gov - wait, where am I?

This is not just ugly.... it's confusing! Where am I, and what am I supposed to do here? How do the SEVEN DIFFERENT LOGOs relate to one another? What's the different between GOES and FAST? What the heck is FLUX? Sentri? (And how did Homeland Security, the parent agency of Customs and Border Protection, miss a chance to get in on the fun?)

You can't build an interface from the inside out, and you can't build a coherent brand from the bottom up. Letting everyone choose their own visual identity results in an ineffective and unappealing mismash, despite good intentions.