Designing the UMN Logo

In 2011 I was challenged to leave my comfort zone and travel to Nepal to help an International Non-Government Organisation (INGO). The United Mission to Nepal (UMN) is a development organisation working solely in Nepal. Shortly after she joined, The Communications Director Lyn Jackson decided that a graphic designer from the west would be beneficial in helping to update their corporate image and to mentor and provide training to the self-taught Nepali graphic designer already in the team.

The first task that was immediately evident that was needed was to re-design or update the existing logo. The mark they were using had been in use for about ten years (fig 1), and straight away I could see some issues with it.

The shape was not helpful to use on most documents as it needed to be considerably enlarged to see the necessary information. The fonts and colours were also not very modern, and the use of grey for the organisations’ name meant it did not stand out when used on anything other than a white background (and even then it was overpowered by the rest of the logo).

The history of previous logos they had used did mean that to maintain a certain level of consistency I wanted to keep some of the elements (fig 2).

I wanted to get a sense of what people expected from a logo for UMN, so I started speaking with both Nepali and expat staff. One of the first things I came to realise was that everyone called them ‘UMN’. After consulting with the leadership team, the decision was made to drop the full title of the group and just use the acronym ‘UMN’, giving us, I felt, a better space to work with.

Also in discussion with the Leadership Team, and having taken other views on board, we decided to keep the five silhoetted figures sitting in front of a rising sun as this was in keeping with other logos of the past. They represented community interaction involving female and male participants, something that all UMN activities could relate to. It also suggested the values of capacity building, participation and local ownership, which were all key principles of UMN’s work. However, I was concerned about the quality of the five silhouettes which had initially been made in 1993 by Michael Brown. The original drawing was lost long ago and subsequent copies of it were of a poor quality and not ideal for a good, modern, clean logo.

I decided to re-draw them but still needed to make sure I kept them culturally relevant (at first I had one of the women sitting in a position which wouldn’t have been appropriate in this culture). We even spent some time debating the crease in the ‘Dhaka topi’ (Nepali hat) which the man in the centre is wearing.

The name ‘United Mission to Nepal’ was kept in full in the Nepali Sanscrit, and we placed this curved above the sun, while under the sun and silhoutted figures the initials ‘UMN’ was written. This was then all encased in a border which would allow the logo to be essentially placed anywhere without interference. The corners were rounded on the top left and bottom right of the box while being kept square on the top right and bottom left. I can not remember why I chose to do this, but may have been influenced by other Nepali work that I was seeing while travelling around Kathmandu. This box later inspired the font that would be used for the letters ‘UMN’.

For the font, I spent a few days experimenting with many different type faces, trying both serif and sans-serif. Each time I came back to the design I was unhappy with how it was looking. I started sketching some ideas and then played around with some lettering in Adobe Illustrator, and this was how the idea to round the font in the same way that the box was came about. Initially, I only needed the three letters of UMN, but later I would develop the entire alphabet for use in other situations such as for the masthead of the quarterly magazine ‘UMNews’.

This logo is coming up for seven years old and is widely recognised throughout Nepal. There are no plans to change it, and we can see it being used for many more years to come. I do regret slightly not being able to use the original silhouetted figures, and if there were to be any change then this would likely be where I’d try. However, the current five are now implanted into people’s minds so much so that any change, even going back, might take some getting used to.