I was just telling a distinguished visitor a few of my various stories about the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health logo. She suggested that it would be a great blog topic. And now that I’m a tenured faculty member at a different university and so can’t get into any [further] trouble over this…
Here’s the logo:
The logo was newly released while I was a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics at Hopkins. It was part of a “branding” effort for the school that was a near-constant source of amusement for me, though I think I did strain an eye muscle or two from all the rolling.
When the logo was first revealed to the faculty, the website describing it (which was not unlike the current pedantic website describing the rules for its use) mentioned the “flame of leaning” rather than “of learning.” I made the tactical error of pointing this out to the web folks, so it was fixed before we had sufficient time to make fun of it.
In addition, the day the logo was revealed, someone said it looked like the logo for some religious organization. A google search for “globe flame logo” instantly revealed the logo for Missionary Church:
Can the similarity be due to chance?
There’s more to come on the logo.
And if you really care about the JHBSPH logo, be sure to pay close attention to the list of Incorrect Logo Usages.