More on coats-of-arms granted to U.S. schools

A 2005 presentation by Henry Bedingfeld, “English Grants of Arms in America,” summarized by the College of Arms Foundation, shows the surprising extent of the honorary grants of arms to institutions in the U.S. following a 1960 decision to begin making such grants. The list includes a number of schools:

  • Georgia State College (1968)
  • Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia (1976)
  • Winthrop College, South Carolina (1980)
  • Middle Georgia College (1983)
  • George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (1997)

A sampling of the other institutions:

  • Town of Kingston, North Carolina (1960)
  • Prince George’s County, Maryland (1976)
  • The Commonwealth of Virginia (1976)
  • St. Thomas Church in New York City (1975)
  • Rich’s Department Store, Atlanta (1967)
  • The Mescalero Apache Tribe (1986)

Some of these recipients are surprisingly downbeat about their arms. Winthrop University, as it is called now, has one of those exhaustive graphic standards manuals (pdf) describing how to use its new shield-like logo, but it relegates its genuine coat of arms to one fuzzy black-and-white image at the back. The school’s “Treasures and Traditions” information pdf describes the coat of arms matter-of-factly and does not mention its origin in the College of Arms.

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[Update 01.05.2013: Broken link to Winthrop pdf replaced.]

Inuksuk on McNutt’s lawn

Artist Peter Irniq (Wikipedia) erected an inuksuk (Wikipedia) on McNutt’s lawn for the Hood Museum (Dartmouth Life; Hood News).

His coat of arms features an inuksuk.

(The Hood has been busy lately, also acquiring, at Sotheby’s, Pompeo Batoni’s 1756 portrait of William Legge, the second earl of Dartmouth.)

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[Update 08.12.2017: Arms image and Wikipedia link removed, replaced with Canadian Bureau of Heraldry link.]

[Update 01.13.2013: Broken link to arms replaced.]

Thayer School adopts new logo

Last month, the Thayer School of Engineering adopted a new logo that incorporates a shield much more in keeping with those of Dartmouth and its other Associated Schools:


Thayer Shield

A wavy-lined representation of the Connecticut River now appears in the base of each institution’s shield.

The old logo was less heraldic and had become somewhat dated, although it has the pleasing feature of representing the hills of New Hampshire and Vermont:


Thayer Logo, old

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[Update 08.31.2013: Broken link to new logo replaced.]

Toward a set of visual identity guidelines

When Dartmouth started its current fundraising campaign in 2001, it expanded its small institutional news service into a full-fledged public relations team under the new office of the Vice President for Public Affairs. The creation of this office was by all accounts an overdue development. In the meantime, students took matters into their own hands by creating Buzzflood; the Tuck School has become a world center for the study of marketing; and alumni have discussed school “branding” (Class of 1963 newsletter).

The PR Office and currently has five members, as described in a profile in PR Week [pdf] and has hired the Manhattan PR firm of Plesser Holland. The firm is experienced in drafting materials and managing reputation but does not claim to be a design shop that focuses on creating logotypes and related images.

The most notable recent step of Dartmouth’s PR Office is the welcome issuance of the Dartmouth Editorial Style Guide during December of 2005 by its Office of Publications. The Guide sets standards for the use of Dartmouth’s Seal (1773, engr. Nathaniel Hurd), its Shield (1940, W.A. Dwiggins, modified 1957), and the lesser-used White Pine from its Bicentennial Flag (1969). The Shield is properly rendered in black and white; the Seal is properly reserved for official uses. The Guide also mentions an odd little Baker Tower sketch that might fit better in a clip art collection. (More information on the history of some of these designs may be found in the Library Bulletin.)

Dartmouth does not yet have a comprehensive set of “visual identity guidelines,” a set of standards that would cover the images mentioned above as well as lay out appropriate uses of an official typeface and coat of arms. Some schools developing clear and comprehensive guidelines that include all of these elements are Brown, Cornell, Cambridge.

A coat of arms is a heraldic device that would exist alongside the Seal and Shield, and it is something the College needs. The most recent proposal for a coat of arms features Dartmouth Hall (unlike the above devices, which feature hypothetical buildings) and includes the school’s motto as well as a buck’s head from the arms of the Second Earl of Dartmouth.

Good proposal Dartmouth arms

Dr. Good’s proposed arms, in black and white

Because a heraldic coat of arms is by nature an adaptable arrangement of colored elements on a field, this design would be suitable for a much wider range of applications than the Shield, which is exclusively a black-and-white line drawing.

Following are some indications that a coat of arms is needed:

Shield as used by Trustees

This Shield uses colors other than black and white and incorporates an inappropriate drop shadow.

Digital Library Logotype

This shade of lavender (presumably derived from the face of Baker’s clocks) belongs in the palette, but this logotype makes the institutional subunit look more independent and important than the Tuck School.

Technology Transfer Office shield

The nonstandard logotype above diverges in size, font, arrangement, and color from the one the school should adopt; the Shield within it also is highly unorthodox. (Dr. Good also notes that it eliminates the Indians from Dartmouth’s Seal.)

Graduate Studies tree

This one uses an attractive but nonstandard version of the White Pine.

The point is not that the new guidelines, which would prevent most of the uses above, are being enforced insufficiently. The website of the Technology Transfer Office needs color in its graphic identification with Dartmouth. The point is that it is inappropriate to transform the Shield into some sort of color logo or coat of arms in graphic-design terms as well as heraldic ones, and that Dartmouth therefore needs a coat of arms, which may be rendered in color or black and white as well as abbreviated, with smaller elements standing for the whole.

The PR Office, as the manager of the school’s visual identity, is the proper body to request the official adoption of a coat of arms and to then specify its use in exactly these situations. The office is probably too busy at the moment, but if it ever commissions a set of visual identity guidelines from an outside firm, as the schools listed above have done, it should include a coat of arms in the specifications for the project. The variety of logotypes that Dartmouth needs (and already is trying to use) simply requires a coat of arms: a black-and-white line drawing from 1940, however traditional and useful in some situations, is far too limited for what Dartmouth requires.

[04.08.2006 altered slightly.]