school colors for usernames

Question

To follow up on requests, I have two questions for you:

a) Do you want your usernames to highlight the school you are attending? Should we just adopt a standard for avatars instead?

b) How should we decide what colors to use for each school?

thank you.

Raabend · Answer

Im not sure why people would want the username to highlight their school. We can just put it on the left under the "schools" area and highlight it in blue like everyone has been doing anyway. Also, lots of people show their school via their avatars.....adding another option might just be overkill.....

young_gun · Answer

i agree w/ raabend...there are already enough options to highlight school choice...avatars and the schools section in the profile...

zonk · Answer

I agree. A school avatar seems like the best way to do this.

isa · Answer

I think in the "Things We could do better" thread some folks had suggested symbols to indicate current students as opposed to applicants. Could we pursue that instead?

Jerz · Answer

I agree - I think there are plenty of ways to show schools currently between the "schools" line and avatars. The ability to distinguish between applicant/current student/alumni would be helpful though.

Raabend · Answer

It would be kind of cool if we could have the option to add small school seals in addition to the avatars.......for no reason other than it will look shnazzy.

liubhs02 · Answer

My vote is for simplicity. There's already plenty of ways to tell what school you will be attending (i.e. avatar, and schools in profile). Changing the username color would make it difficult to tell who's admin, moderator, director.

OhThatMBA · Answer

I like this idea.

riverripper · Answer

I like the color ID idea...I never look at the info under names on the left (there is a lot there), I look at the name but thats about it. A lot of people dont use school avatars and you cant force them to or give them one...you also cant ensure they update their status to say school x class of YY. Also I like the idea of being able to identify posts on the main page as being from students. It is a quick easy way to identify students without asking them to do much. I mean I know who are current students this year no matter what their avatar or info says since I remember posters from last year. However, new people have no idea who is who...if its easily identifiable then it makes everyone's life easier.

Honestly, there is a little bit of credibility that I give to someone who is a student over a person who heard info from a friend, second hand, or read it online. So if i saw someone who is a student post something I will believe what they say a lot more. Not sure what color should be, I would say Blue since thats what we use to symoblize what school people are going to be attending in the status. Since that is the board of directors, maybe the BOD should get a new color like purple, orange or something else.

Symbols would work too if put next to the names or something.

smokedpotatoes2 · Answer

agreed

Jerz · Answer

A challenge with using school colors is that you may have duplicates or closely related colors. For example, how could we tell the difference between Maroon, Crimson and Cardinal for Booth, HBS and Stanford, or between NYU and Kellogg which are both purple? If the colors we use aren't necessarily the school colors, it's not any easier for people to quickly identify school based on color without understanding the gmatclub school color coding system.

Maybe, if it's possible, we can move the "schools" line directly under the username, and then add some sort of icon to show whether it's a current student or prospective.

monkbent · Answer

Or leave the schools where it is for prospective students, and add a line under the name for current students.

riverripper · Answer

I dont mean each school getting a different color. I just mean all current students have a color. You are right the colors would be too similar to tell them apart. Sort of like mods being identified by a color, identify all students with a colored name.

school colors for usernames

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