Seoulscapade

This logo on the banner was something I came up with. I didn’t received any recognition or royalties for it, but to be fair, a lot of other people were involved in the process and they probably didn’t either.

It all started with a call to my office from my Institutes’s Executive Director, who asked for some assistance. In her office, she said that she needed a slogan for some kind of banner to do with the University’s 60th anniversary. Could I think of anything? I said I would need a little time and retreated to my office, where I came up with 12 slogans to choose from. I thought my job was done until I took them back and was asked which one I liked most. I nominated 3 on the spot without really having time to consider it.

One of those I chose contained the expression that was selected, “Soaring Ever Higher,” which I felt carried the risk of being slightly corny. I explained that it had been inspired by an abstract sculpture on campus with wings aligned with the four compass points, depicting the flight to intellectual heights, or something like that (see below). It’s a kind of Neoplatonic notion that has been linked to SNU in the past, as far as I know.

A week later, I was called down again to confirm that they had selected and intended to use was OK. It’s lucky I had been because they had modified 60th Anniversary to 60Years Anniversary. I put them straight on that one.

A little time passed before one night when I was walking home and nearly ran into this 4 to 5 metre high structure, erected near the student dorms, with my slogan on it. I was a bit stunned, not because it wasn’t there the day before but because I’d been told my slogan would be used on a banner—a single banner, I had presumed. Shortly after, I noticed a larger monolithic structure near SNU’s front gate. It was rather strange, like some cut diamond (the significance of its shape eludes me to this day).

Next I saw my slogan on the sides of all of the university’s buses and on banners under every lamppost throughout the university! It didn’t stop there. I checked SNU’s website and sure enough, there it was: “Soaring Ever Higher”! What a laugh. Posters appeared featuring it. They were surprising, done with a grey minimalist design with the slogan in tiny letters in a corner.

For the period of the celebrations, over several months, my slogan was all over campus. I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing it. And it amused to me walk past where people could see it, or even be there when they were taking pictures, like the family below, knowing that I was its author.

Except for the strange structure near the gate, everything was tastefully done, I think, by not being overdone, and by the use of decent colour coordinations.

It sure was an education to me about how some things come about. To think that what I dashed off in my office one afternoon was transformed into logo seen all over campus—well, it was both perplexing and amusing. After a few months, it was all gone as if it had never happened.