University Shield
The University Shield is a symbol associated with Columbia that debuted in 1949. The shield is technically not a "coat of arms", and the University does not in fact have one.[2] There are very few official uses of the shield these days except on bookstore merchandise, and the podium used for public events like Commencement.[3][4] The shield had previously been used by the Law School, and appeared on some Soccer team uniforms, among other uses. Its use is technically regulated by the Secretary of the University. For reasons that are unclear, the University has recently decided to adopt as an "official" version of the shield a design that is neither the original design, nor the design that the University registered a trademark for, and in fact alters the original color scheme.[5]
Contents
History
Not counting modern variations on the King's Crown, the shield is the most recent symbol adopted by the University. Columbia officials unveiled the new symbol on February 10, 1949. It was designed by Milton Halsey Thomas, curator of Columbiana, Phillip M. Hayden, then Secretary of the University, and Harold H. Booth of Trenton N.J., a specialist in heraldry.[6]
As adopted by the trustees in 1949, the design consists of a blue shield, a white chevron, and three gold crowns. Heraldically its described as "Azure (blue), Chevron Argent (silver), Three Crowns Or (gold)." The blue and white colors were drawn from the traditional school colors (which in turn were drawn respectively from the Philolexian and the Peithologian Societies.) The shield-with-chevron design was a nod to the coat-of-arms of Samuel Johnson, and the crowns an allusion to the original Crown of King's College.[7] An optional ribbon (sometimes blue in color) below the shield bears the school motto.
In some older illustrations of the shield, a lions head in profile (a "crest") facing left with tongue stuck out is above the shield on a torse. This is another nod to the Johnson family coat-of-arms, which had three such lions heads (instead of crowns) on its shield. The GS shield incorporates one of these lions head onto its shield design, and an original sketch for the GS shield copies the lion from the Johnson coat directly. A potential shield for SEAS replaces the lower crown on the shield with crossed hammers.[8].
A similarity to the Oxford shield is possibly coincidental. Interestingly, King's College was once envisioned to be the first university in North America, in the mold of Oxford and Cambridge, and the second President of King's College, Myles Cooper, was an Oxford-educated priest. But the shield was conceived long after King's College was a memory, and the design was largely based on the Johnson coat-of-arms, though perhaps some inspiration was taken from old Oxford.
Use
One of the shield's purposes was to serve as a loosely regulated but official ornamental symbol of the school, since the University Seal, Columbia's oldest symbol, was and still is reserved for purposes of symbolic legal authentication. An informative leaflet states that "The design of the shield is the copyrighted property of the University, and while general permission to reproduce it is freely given, any debasement or undignified use of it may result in such permission being rescinded. It may be used as a decoration without special permission by graduates and members of the University, and may be reproduced in proper form on stationary, and on jewelry and pottery."[9]
Today the shield is sparingly used even in its officially sanctioned purpose as the "official unofficial symbol" of the school, having been largely superseded by the King's Crown. While it has regained some popularity in the bookstore, there is little consistency in design usage, with the new "official" design as well as the trademarked design (and a number of variations of uncertain origins on both) appearing interchangeably, while the original design is a rare find.
Pictures
The current "official" design, according to the university visual identity guide. Note the use of the most recent version of the "modern" crown.
An alternative to the trademarked design. Note the lack of shadows on the scroll below the shield.
A slightly erroneously colored version of the original design.[12]
An unofficial rendition of the original University Shield[13]
Older Design with lions head from 1963 yearbook. Note the slightly tapered shield design.
Design with lions head embedded in a yearbook cover from the 1980s
An alternative layout appearing on bookstore merchandise featuring outsized crowns.
The University of Oxford Shield
The School of General Studies Shield.
Early version of the GS Shield. The lions head design is copied directly from the Johnson family coat-of-arms in this version.
A sketch of a potential SEAS shield from the university archives
One of many sketches of an early shield design from the university archives
An undated fanciful presentation of the shield from the university archives
CUMB Logo
Shield on the podium. An increasingly rare occurrence of the original design.
References
- ↑ This is a photo of card that I imagine was used for graphic design and type-setting, etc., in the pre-computer era. There's a stack of these in the subject file in the university archives.
- ↑ Some years ago, a group of alumni donated an unofficial "coat of arms" centered on the shield design for the University Club of Chicago to display in there Cathedral Hall, which is decorated with coats from various schools.
- ↑ The podium featuring the shield disappeared from public use between roughly 2004-2007 before reappearing once again.
- ↑ In fact, the University's visual identity guide recommends never using the shield to symbolically identify the school, instead directing graphic designers to use the modern King's Crown
- ↑ blue290 A Practical Guide to Columbia’s Standards of Visual Identity (May 2009)
- ↑ New York Herald Tribune, 11 Feb. 1949
- ↑ What the designers of the first shield termed the "Johnson family coat of arms" was actually a design incorporated into a bookplate for the Johnson family library, not really a coat-of-arms at all. It may in fact have been their coat, but the bookplate was what served as the designers' inspiration.
- ↑ Illustrated card in Columbia University Archives, Historical Subject Files, Series XXI: Symbols, Box 255, Folder 5. A number of early sketches of designs, possibly executed by Milton Thomas are also in this folder.
- ↑ Columbia Archives, Historical Subject Files, Series XXi: Symbols, Box 255, Folder 2 (second set of sheets).
- ↑ Serial No. 73731782 Reg. No. 1530172
- ↑ When the bookstore uses a shield on merchandise, it's often this design, though the "official" design is starting to appear with some frequency as well.
- ↑ It appears that for years this was the JPG file of choice for amateur graphic designers on campus. Likely due to the lack of centrally developed visual identity guidelines, various divisions and offices probably designed flyers, signs, etc. using whatever JPG files they had lying around. You can still see this design around campus on printed out stuff, but with decreasing frequency.
- ↑ This is not an official rendition, but a scan of a black and white version of the colored card mentioned previously colored with photoshop. I did this to make a better graphic than the low-res erroneously colored one for this article in an early version. Among other things I failed to properly color the ribbon blue.
