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)
Hm — ADHO in lower-case Koch
Hm — ADHO in lower-case Koch Gothic?
Exercise in paleography: pick
Exercise in paleography: pick your ADHO bastarda.
Tweetback:
Ernesto Priego:
Tweetback:
Combination of design 1 and
Combination of design 1 and 3: five.
Response to Aurélien Berra’s critique: six.
Tweetback:
Claire Warwick:
Tweetback:
In response to Claire’s
In response to Claire’s symbolic reading of design six (PDF): seven (PDF). Alternate take: eight (PDF).
I think design no. 8 is
I think design no. 8 is fantastic, and an illustration of why good design really matters.
Saskia Scheltjens: “Found it
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)
rev ten, ink on paper
rev
rev ten, ink on paper
rev ten, distressed (PDF)
rev ten, monoline (PDF)
Gabriel Bodard: “new ADHO
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?