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Unsolicited

By Rudolf Ammann (@rkammann) · 12 July 2010

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) sports a logo that combines an umbrella with a representation of the northern hemisphere, which has always struck me as less than felicitous. Now that there's a site overhaul in the works, I found myself thinking about alternatives. So: why would the ADHO acronym be set in Eurostile, the typeface that says "space age" like no other typeface? ADHO is a humanities organisation, and some of its members work with medieval manuscripts, so why not celebrate some historic letter forms and use, say, an uncial script in the logo? Here's a few rough takes on the idea: one, two, three (PDF).

Update: four (PDF)

Comments

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 12 July 2010:

Hm -- ADHO in lower-case Koch Gothic?

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 12 July 2010:

Exercise in paleography: pick your ADHO bastarda.

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 13 July 2010:

Tweetback:

  1. Ernesto Priego: "I love no. 3!"
  2. Gabriel Bodard: "3 is most logo-like, but I like the letters in 1"
  3. Claire Ross: "I really like number three!"
  4. Claire Warwick: "I like both 1 and 3 and think both a great improvement on current version"
  5. John Unsworth: "These ADHO logos are great; I like 1 and 3, maybe 1 the best."
  6. Melissa Terras: "we should send the @rkammann logos round to the adho committee"
  7. Aurélien Berra: "Beautiful studies for a new ADHO logo"
  8. Aurélien Berra: "But do distinctively Gaelic or Gothic scripts fit an international alliance? Visual semiotics involved…"
  9. Saskia Scheltjens: "1, then 3"
Rudolf Ammann wrote on 14 July 2010:

Combination of design 1 and 3: five.

Response to Aurélien Berra's critique: six.

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 14 July 2010:

Tweetback:

  1. Claire Warwick: "love no 6 it looks like text pushing the boundaries of its digital container, v appropriate"
  2. Aurélien Berra: "Logo proposal No. 6 by @rkammann for #ADHO is very elegant: nice (Chinese) seal-like design"
  3. Raffaele Viglianti: "I like the new logo proposal very much! (n. 6) The colours too!"
Rudolf Ammann wrote on 15 July 2010:

In response to Claire's symbolic reading of design six (PDF): seven (PDF). Alternate take: eight (PDF).

Susan Greenberg wrote on 15 July 2010:

I think design no. 8 is fantastic, and an illustration of why good design really matters.

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 15 July 2010:

Saskia Scheltjens: "Found it difficult to choose between no 7 and 8. But in the end I really like the colour scheme and the playfullness of 8"

Rev nine (Flickr)

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 16 July 2010:

rev ten, ink on paper
rev ten, distressed (PDF)
rev ten, monoline (PDF)

Rudolf Ammann wrote on 17 July 2010:

Gabriel Bodard: "new ADHO logo proposals are not convincing me. First attempt was in a nice font, but as Aurélien pointed out, isn't really the right context"

Maybe I should have mentioned that the ink-on-paper sketches and the "distressed" variant of rev ten were intended to evoke a process rather than to present a product. Here's a cleaned-up variant of the same idea, still fairly crude:

rev ten (regular)

Aurélien and Gabriel, I'm curious about the sentiment that lies behind the rejection of uncial script as insufficiently international. If I suggested that the ADHO logo be rendered in a formal book hand that originates from Italy, such as Lombardic script, or from France, such as bâtarde, would you reject them as "too mediterranean" to be suitable for an international organisation?

 
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Rudolf Ammann · London, UK