Charles Sturt University's new brandThe heritage of Charles Sturt University can be traced back over more than 100 years. As our environment, and the expectations of the community and our other stakeholders change, we have also adapted ourselves and our image, ensuring our brand and our messages accurately represent who we are, what we do and what we stand for as an educational institution.
The new CSU brand launched in 2011 is an important milestone in our development as an educational institution, providing the opportunity to reflect on the University’s strengths and refresh our outlook throughout the organisation and the industry. Consistent application of a trusted brand through our visual or verbal communications is critical for positioning Charles Sturt University as a strong and unified institution within the increasingly competitive environment in which the University operates.
A strong, recognisable brand links us to our organisational strategy, representing what we as an institution stand for and value. It is a vehicle to consistently build the University’s reputation within the organisation, and in the broader fields of tertiary education, internationally-valued research, and in the workplaces of all our graduates.
Our University brand is created by everything we do; our interactions with each other, our students and with our stakeholders and the wider community. It is in our written communication, our presentation in person and online, and our attitudes. Our brand is visually represented through our logo mark; a suite of colours, images and graphic elements, and our ‘house style’. Our brand is everyone’s responsibility and your commitment to CSU.
Professor Andrew Vann
Vice-Chancellor
May 2012
During 2010, an independent consultant conducted a series of surveys and online workshops involving a selection of over 500 prospective students (including students who did and did not enrol with CSU), students (including students who intended leaving CSU), graduates, parents, employers, industry partners (e.g. professional associations) and staff. Rather than telling our stakeholders what we think makes us unique and different and how we add value to their lives, we asked our stakeholders to tell us.
What arose from this process was a strong agreement across all our stakeholders about what makes CSU unique and different.
It is our willingness to work collaboratively with all our stakeholders across all interactions that makes us different, and allows us to create better outcomes and better futures.
To ensure that we can embody the characteristics of a great brand, we have used this uniqueness and differentiation to inform and define a simple unifying idea – our brand essence – 'Better Together'.
Our brand is a unique promise that must be kept. It is a combination of our sense of community, flexibility, our focus on individuals and our results that makes Charles Sturt University unique and different. Our brand is how all our stakeholders think and feel about our organisation, its people, products and services – it is their perception of Charles Sturt University.
We are Charles Sturt University, one of Australia's pre-eminent universities. Our campuses can be found across regional, metropolitan and international locations as well as via our distance and flexible education programs.
We provide highest quality higher educational programs and research to a range of students and stakeholders. These include regional, metropolitan, government, industry, international and indigenous stakeholders, just to name a few.
We work closely with our community, government and industry stakeholders to create relevant educational and research programs and then work with our internal stakeholders and students to administer and deliver those programs.
Our uniqueness is defined by our regional relevance, our demand driven approach to research and program development, a unique multi-campus and distance education structure that supports flexibility in learning and an attitude that seeks to bring out the best in our students and communities.
CSU and its antecedent institutions have been served by a range of visual identities since 1895 with the inception of the Bathurst and Wagga Wagga Experimental farms. While these logos are part of CSU’s visual history, 2010 and many changes in our sector brought the timely opportunity to create a new identity for a University looking far into the future, with strong values of collaboration, reliability and inclusiveness, couched in a long history of serving our regions.
The new visual brand of the CSU expresses a uniqueness and distinction within the highly competitive market. It is designed to assist all stakeholders in the University recognise and recall our brand and to link it to our services and products.
Our new visual identity reflects our contemporary values of agility, inclusiveness and being agents of change and provides a strong, recognisable expression of all our brand entails.
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Our icon is inspired by components of the traditional Charles Sturt University logo mark and encapsulates references to Sturt's Desert Pea, a book and a shield shape.
By blending these elements together, the icon suggests:
This supports the brand positioning, ‘Better Together’ by referencing our:
The typeface for the word mark has been specifically modified for CSU.
The Accent Graphic base typeface was selected as it holds similar qualities to the icon by providing a sense of openness and accessibility – key attributes within our ‘Better Together’ positioning.
The typeface was then modified by the original font designers to ensure its consistency with the icon. Particular attention was paid to the ‘S’ and ‘U’ letters and spacing of the overall word mark.
The resultant changes to the typeface are encapsulated into a new typeface designated ‘CSU Accent Graphic’, and are exclusive to Charles Sturt University.
For enquiries regarding the new CSU brand:
Email: brand@csu.edu.au
Phone: (02) 6933 4446
Email: news@csu.edu.au
If you need to incorporate the logo into a document or website, please advise the Division of Marketing indicating the type of use and date it is required. ALL logo use needs to be logged in the register managed by the Division.