This issue marks the first appearance of NCSE's new logo in RNCSE. In July 2007, NCSE's board of directors decided to consider replacing or re-imagining our logo. NCSE invited our members and other interested individuals to submit designs for a new logo for the board's consideration.
To give the widest scope for the creativity of our participants, we gave only a very general set of guidelines. We asked that entries not contain misleading motifs, such as the image of marching hominins (evolution is a branching process). We also asked participants to try to avoid images that are overused, like dinosaurs, and warned that skeletons in general evoke the image of death for many people and are thus unsuitable. However, these were guidelines, not rules; one submission used both dinosaurs and a skeleton, and it was selected as a finalist.
Submissions ranged from abstract symbols to photographic montages. Several people submitted re-imaginings of our old logo; DNA and trees of life were other popular themes. A number of people submitted logos with apples, presumably to represent education; unfortunately, the apple also has certain biblical implications that we would rather avoid!
The winning entry is by graphic artist Andrew Conti. He described his entry as follows:
I have taken Charles Darwin's original notebook sketch of the tree of life and reworked it with rounded and more organic lines. By doing so, it is my intention to give a sense of open-minded and creative playfulness, while at the same time tying a direct link to the science and history of scientific understanding that is the focus of the NCSE.
All of us in the NCSE family extend our gratitude to Conti and our deepest thanks to all our participants for their continuing support of NCSE and science education.