RE: [MAPC-discuss] MAPC Logo Design -- Graphics, Symbolism, and

RE: [MAPC-discuss] MAPC Logo Design -- Graphics, Symbolism, and

born-digital

email

yes

no

2001-11-12

I couldn't read all the way through this message from Gillam without
reacting...  here goes:

My best advice to the kids and th egrown-ups who want to hassle this is "get
a life."  The Peace Symbol is a wonderful thing... paint it green if you
have to, use it as a global truss if that appeals to your graphic
sensibilities, but don't drop it and here's why...

The so called "Peace Symbol" pre-dates most of us (apologies to the
septuagenarians and older folks in our membership).  By the mid-1950s,
public protests of the nuclear arms race were building. In 1955, the year in
which Albert Einstein died, he and Bertrand Russell issued a Manifesto
warning of the dangers of continuing the nuclear arms race. Two years later
in 1957 the great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer made a public "Declaration
of Conscience" in which he stated that "the end of further experiments with
atom bombs would be like early sun rays of hope which suffering humanity is
longing for." The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), an
organization of private citizens seeking to alter official nuclear policies,
was formed in 1957.

One of the most widely known symbols in the world, in Britain it is
recognised as standing for nuclear disarmament and in particular as the
logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In the United States and
much of the rest of the world it is known more broadly as the peace symbol.
It was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist
and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts. He showed his preliminary
sketches to a small group of people in the Peace News office in North London
and to the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, one of several
smaller organisations that came together to set up CND.

The Direct Action Committee had already planned what was to be the first
major anti-nuclear march, from London to Aldermaston, where British nuclear
weapons were and still are manufactured. It was on that march, over the 1958
Easter weekend that the symbol first appeared in public. Five hundred
cardboard lollipops on sticks were produced. Half were black on white and
half white on green. Just as the churchs liturgical colours change over
Easter, so the colours were to change, from Winter to Spring, from Death to
Life. Black and white would be displayed on Good Friday and Saturday, green
and white on Easter Sunday and Monday.

The first badges were made by Eric Austin of Kensington CND using white clay
with the symbol painted black. Again there was a conscious symbolism . They
were distributed with a note explaining that in the event of a nuclear war,
these fired pottery badges would be among the few human artifacts to survive
the nuclear inferno. These early ceramic badges can still be found and one,
lent by CND, was included in the Imperial War Museums 1999/2000 exhibition
From the Bomb to the Beatles.

What does it mean?

Gerald Holtom, a conscientious objector who had worked on a farm in Norfolk
during the Second World War, explained that the symbol incorporated the
semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament). He later wrote to Hugh Brock,
editor of Peace News, explaining the genesis of his idea in greater, more
personal depth:

I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an
individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards
in the manner of Goyas peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the
drawing into a line and put a circle round it.

Eric Austin added his own interpretation of the design: "the gesture of
despair had long been associated with the death of Man and the circle with
the unborn child."


Gerald Holtom had originally considered using the Christian cross symbol
within a circle as the motif for the march but various priests he had
approached with the suggestion were not happy at the idea of using the cross
on a protest march. Later, ironically, Christian CND were to use the symbol
with the central stroke extended upwards to form the upright of a cross.
This adaptation of the design was only one of many subsequently invented by
various groups within CND and for specific occasions with a cross below as
a womens symbol, with a daffodil or a thistle incorporated by CND Cymru and
Scottish CND, with little legs for a sponsored walk etc. Whether Gerald
Holtom would have approved of some of the more light-hearted versions is
open to doubt.

The symbol almost at once crossed the Atlantic. Bayard Rustin, a close
associate of Martin Luther King had come over from the US in order to take
part in that first Aldermaston March. He took the symbol back to the United
States where it was used on civil rights marches. Later it appeared on
anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and was even seen daubed in protest on their
helmets by American GIs. Simpler to draw than the Picasso peace dove, it
became known, first in the US and then round the world as the peace symbol.
It appeared on the walls of Prague when the Soviet tanks invaded in 1968, on
the Berlin Wall, in Sarajevo and Belgrade, on the graves of the victims of
military dictators from the Greek Colonels to the Argentinian junta, and
most recently in East Timor.

There have been claims that the symbol has older, occult or anti-Christian
associations. In South Africa, under the apartheid regime, there was an
official attempt to ban it. Various far-right and fundamentalist American
groups have also spread the idea of Satanic associations or condemned it as
a Communist sign. However the origins and the ideas behind the symbol have
been clearly described, both in letters and in interviews, by Gerald Holtom
and his original, first sketches are now on display as part of the
Commonweal Collection in Bradford.

Although specifically designed for the anti-nuclear movement it has quite
deliberately never been copyrighted. No one has to pay or to seek permission
before they use it. A symbol of freedom, it is free for all. This of course
sometimes leads to its use, or misuse, in circumstances that CND and the
peace movement find distasteful. It is also often exploited for commercial,
advertising or generally fashion purposes. We cant stop this happening and
have no intention of copyrighting it. All we can do is to ask commercial
users if they would like to make a donation. Any money received is used for
CNDs peace education and information work.

(material from the CND website)




Here is a link to the Russell - Einstein manisfesto issued in 1955:
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/docs/1955/550709-russel-einstein.html




-----Original Message-----
From: X
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 8:51 PM
To: discuss@madpeace.org
Cc: stopwardisc@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MAPC-discuss] MAPC Logo Design -- Graphics, Symbolism, and
Baggage


Hi all!

Just a heads up that the MAPC logo will be on the agenda for Tuesday night's
general membership meeting, and a few comments (okay, I lied - lots of
comments) since I may not be able to attend the whole meeting.

While (AFAIK) we've never voted on this, the peace sign wrapped around the
globe has become the de facto MAPC logo.  (IIRC the general membership
referred the logo question back to the Arts & Culture WG, and they couldn't
come up with anything better.)

The Student/Youth Caucus has objected to this logo, and designed a new one,
which will be presented on Tuesday.  (As I understand it, the problem is
that the peace sign is tied to a particular historic era, and carries
baggage which is too hippie-ish -- as opposed to activist.  There is also
concern that the grey-scale of the logo does not reduce or reproduce well.)
Their proposed logo has a half-globe, without peace sign, with paler images
of the globe radiating out from it.  (Lousy description, I know.)

I sympathize with the S/YC's objections, but I like their proposed graphic
even less than the one we've been using.  To me, it's not particularly
distinctive, and a globe alone just doesn't say "peace" to me.  It could
just as easily be the logo graphic for a global telecommunications
corporation.

Then again, I'm not sure that any graphic we pick to represent
"peace/anti-war" will be acceptable to and truly representative of the whole
Coalition.  The Vietnam-era peace sign is, well, Vietnam era, and doesn't
represent the new generation of activists.  The dove has a longer history,
but strikes me as a bit too "Pacifist" in image, as does the rifle with a
flower in its barrel, broken rifle, broken bomb, and a few others.  The
other predominant image from the Vietnam era, the clenched fist, of course,
has the opposite connotation.  We've already been through the discussion of
incorporating the symbolism of the American flag; some of us think "peace is
patriotic" and others of us think U.S. nationalism is part of the problem.
And while the globe could well be something that none of us object to, it
really doesn't symbolize anything that distinguishes us from the other side.

"Madison area" is tough to symbolize graphically.  The most identifiable
symbols are architectural (the State Capitol), and we have nothing to do
with state government.  Doing something with the outline of the state and
highlighting the Madison area really doesn't work graphically.  And I doubt
that anyone would recognize that a satellite view of the Four Lakes was
anything other than a Rorschach inkblot test.

We could try to have a symbol for everyone, incorporating lots of different
images in the logo, but the result would likely be an unwieldy mess.

My personal opinion at this point is that we should either (1)come up with a
graphic that is brand new -- no baggage from past movements or ideologies --
(and I have no earthly idea what this would be); or (2) just go with a
"words-only" logo, using a very distinctive typestyle and arrangement of the
words in our organization name.  If the typestyle and arrangement are
distinctive enough, IMO the logo will be recognizeable and identifiable, and
would avoid the symbolism & baggage problems inherent in selecting any
graphic image for a diverse coalition.

XX



_______________________________________________
discuss@madpeace.org mailing list
http://lists.OpenSoftwareServices.com/mailman/listinfo/madpeace-discuss


_______________________________________________
discuss@madpeace.org mailing list
http://lists.OpenSoftwareServices.com/mailman/listinfo/madpeace-discuss

Monday, November 12, 2001 9:44 PM

RE: [MAPC-discuss] MAPC Logo Design -- Graphics, Symbolism, and