The Ambassadors’ Exchange: Designing Our New Logo

This month, The Ensemble Ambassadors worked together to create a logo that represented the heart and spirit of the program.

First, we each thought about our cohort’s goals and interests. What images best represented the initiative? Each Ambassador then drafted their own designs, which we then discussed one by one as a group. Several of us incorporated musical symbols, different languages, and images of the world in our drawings. There were so many great ideas! It was hard to settle on just one, but we eventually decided on Melis’s idea of two hands holding a set of sixteenth notes over a drawing of Earth. This allowed us to highlight the international nature of our program while incorporating an inside joke between this year’s cohort. You may have figured it out already—we chose a sixteenth note because there are 16 of us in this year’s cohort!

By the end of the first meeting, we had to resolve two questions. First, how should we draw the globe—which can only show one dimension of the world—without excluding some countries? And second, what color should the skin tone of each hand be?

Melis: I made another draft with these concerns in mind. We first decided to use a more complete representation of the world by drawing all seven continents. We had to make sure that each Ambassador’s native country was visible on the logo! I used two different skin tones for the hands. It took me three-and-a-half hours to make this second draft—a little exhausting, as I had never drawn hands before! I feel a bit relieved that I was able to figure them out. At our follow-up meeting, we decided on the logo’s final colors, which you can see in the accompanying image. It was a great honor to do this. Thank you to my friends in the cohort—we did a great job together!