The Story Behind the Lettering Style

There’s some history behind the letterforms that make up the new UCLA logo.

The geometric simplicity of the shapes reflects the influence of the Bauhaus. This utopian design movement arose in the early twentieth century. In fact, the Bauhaus Manifesto was issued in 1919, the same year UCLA was founded. While type designs came a few years later in Bauhaus history, it’s no accident that the Bauhaus inspiration proved appropriate to UCLA’s personality. The style and the school are contemporaries.

UCLA is relatively young in terms of academia, but well established and esteemed both in the U.S. and internationally. The Bauhaus-flavored UCLA lettering expresses this duality because it is a modern classic: fresh and contemporary, but in a way that has withstood the test of time. Even the Bauhaus motto of “art and technology – a new unity” seems uncannily appropriate to the UCLA of today, where the new Westwood hospital combines innovative architecture, state of the art technology, and hard-won insights into the art of healing.

While we don’t ever put periods in “UCLA” these days, this 1939 cover of the alumni magazine shows an early use of geometric sans-serif type to express UCLA’s personality.

• Information on the history of the Bauhaus comes from the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum of Design,
  www.bauhaus.de/english/index.htm
  
• The alumni magazine cover comes from UCLA on the Move, the campus history by John Jackson and Andrew Hamilton.
  

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