The origins of Imprint, University of Waterloo’s student newspaper, are rooted in Waterloo’s start as the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, a semi-autonomous and non-denominational entity affiliated with Waterloo College (present-day Wilfrid Laurier University). Waterloo College’s two student newspapers, College Cord and Newsweekly were merged in 1958 to form The Cord Weekly, now called The Cord, which remains Laurier's student newspaper.

Engineering students at the Waterloo College Associate Faculties started their own newsletter in early 1959 shortly after the formation of the Engineering Society. The newsletter was dubbed Enginews and was originally published as a mimeographed sheet of foolscap. By late 1959, Enginews joined The Cord Weekly and appeared as a special section with its own masthead within the newspaper. The collaboration between The Cord Weekly and Enginews ended in the spring of 1960.

Enginews continued to publish issues in the spring and summer of 1960 until a new, initially nameless, newspaper was released in the fall of that year. This new newspaper was named The Coryphaeus, the Greek word for leader, in the second issue. Early issues of The Coryphaeus looked like The Cord Weekly, and Enginews continued to appear as a separate section with its own masthead in the paper. However, this special section slowly disappeared as the paper focused more on engineering.

The dominance of engineering news in The Coryphaeus disappointed many arts students who slowly organized and took over the newspaper. The Coryphaeus was renamed The Chevron in 1966, and as times changed, began to take a more radical editorial slant as the activist student movement of the 1960s got underway. Focus shifted away from engineering coverage to reporting on social and political issues of the day.

Believing they were no longer represented by The Chevron, a group of engineering students relaunched Enginews with a crude and irreverent style in July 1967. Publication of the new Enginews stopped in 1985 after the Iron Warrior, a paper with a more professional, serious-minded profile launched in 1980, proved to have more appeal with students. The Chevron*’s continued promotion of what was viewed as a radical left-wing agenda continued into the 1970s and resulted in a lack of confidence from the Waterloo’s student body. In November of 1978, after an extended dispute with the Federation of Students executive, now the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, the newspaper’s budget was frozen and The Chevron was overwhelmingly rejected by students in a referendum, leading to its removed as Waterloo's official student newspaper.

In the spring of 1978, the University of Waterloo Journalism Club, made up of former Chevron staffers and other Waterloo students, started its own weekly publication called Imprint. Initially funded solely by advertising, the paper won the support of students in a referendum held in March 1979 and the Imprint was named Waterloo's official student newspaper. Publication of the award-winning newspaper continues today with a large circulation in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and a six-figure operating budget.