Why The Oscars Logo Got A
Makeover
The Academy›s old logo
Margaret Rhodes
LA-BASED AGENCY 180LA GAVE THE ACADEMY ITS NEW VISUAL IDENTITY.
Invariably, when an actor wins an Oscar, he thanks the
Academy in his acceptance speech. At which point, millions
of people watching are probably wondering, who and what
exactly is this omniscient Academy?
While best (or perhaps only) known as the organization behind
the annual awards show, the Academy is also a company
that employs thousands of people who work in education,
on film archiving, and--right now especially--on the soonto-open, Renzo Piano-designed Academy Museum of Motion
Pictures. Despite the year-round work, the Academy’s visual
identity only spotlighted one thing: the Oscars.
Which helps explain why last year, the Academy enlisted the
help of 180LA, a design agency based in Los Angeles, to
create a new visual identity. “They needed a unifying idea,
regardless of whether you’re an archivist in white gloves
taking care of treasures in film, or a Steven Spielberg type,”
says William Gelner, 180LA’s chief creative officer.
The old Academy logo had existed since the 1920s, and
it exclusively showed off the shape of the Academy’s gold
statuette. At some point, the statuette became ensconced in
a round oval. To create a more encompassing brand identity,
Gelner and the design team decided that the Oscar had to
stop hogging the spotlight.
“It became a simple solution,” Richard Harrington, head of
design, tells Co.Design. “For me it was all about the light
that was behind the original logo. So we picked that light up
and shone it down on top of the Oscar, and it created an ‘A’
shape. There were the same components: we’ve got light,
we‘ve got a statuette. And it’s an ‘A’ shape, which obviously
stands for the Academy.”
Gelner and Harrington also found that by stashing the anchor
logo--of the statuette underneath the letter ‘A’--they could
easily integrate it into larger signage for the Academy, or the
Oscars, without reinventing the entire look. “In the old logo,
the Academy brand itself felt like a tagalong, versus being
the brand behind the Oscars,” Gelner says. “Now there’s a
huge