By Daniel de Vise, Washington Post, 12/7/11.
The pair of arcing lines above the new logo for Gallaudet University, unveiled Wednesday, might look like a random flourish of decorative branding. But to the Gallaudet community, they mean a great deal more.
Gallaudet leaders believe they have come up with the first university logo to incorporate both English and American Sign Language. The arcing lines, which sweep across the letters of “Gallaudet” and meet in a point, represent the unique sign that corresponds to the university’s name.
It’s a bilingual logo for a bilingual university. Administrators of the Northeast Washington institution have championed the dual-language model in recent years, to preserve traditional deaf culture at a time when rising numbers of deaf and hard-of-hearing students are immersed in the hearing world. It’s increasingly common for Gallaudet students to come from mainstream public schools, and to arrive without proficiency in sign language.
Gallaudet’s old logo, a sort of framed letter G, had been in place since 1986. Last summer, president T. Alan Hurwitz empaneled a committee to find a new design.
Read the rest of the article (and to see another picture showing how the Gallaudet sign influenced the new logo) at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/gallaudet-unveils-bilingual-logo/2011/12/07/gIQA5L4fcO_blog.html.
- Thanks to friends of Gallaudet.