Yes… Choosing a Symbol Carefully Matters
I would like to use the example of a ministry I am involved in, to support the title of this post.
Back in 2011 we founded CPSP-Philippines. CPSP (College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy) is an organization based in the United States that deals with accreditation and certification for CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) training centers, as well as clinical chaplains, pastoral counselors, and pastoral psychotherapists.
Their logo is simple, meant to combine the idea of a vibrant human being and a growing plant. It is below:
Since we were a daughter organization of CPSP and were seeking to symbolically show a connection with our parent organization, while still showing some uniqueness, we went through a few iterations. Only a couple of them I will show here.
First, we tried keeping the primary signal (vibrant plant/human), but then make it seem more like the Philippines by adding a symbol associated with the Philippines. So first we added a coconut palm next to it. While coconut palms are certainly associated with the Philippines, with it being a major Philippine agricultural product, and intimately tied to the culture, coconut palms are linked to much of the tropics, especially closer to the beaches. The symbol can give the wrong impression. This is not CPSP taking a vacation on a tropic beach.
The next one was rather a fancy one with a stylized Philippine flag overlaying it. It actually looked quite good. There were, however, a couple of potential problems:
-It was a complicated logo. Logos should not be too complicated. If we want to, for example, do logo-embroidered ball caps or shirts, complexity is a problem. While we might think that making a logo complicated allows for deeper meaning… often it can obscure meaning. Periodically, little articles would show up online (maybe they still do) helping people see things in logos that people were missing— the Bear in the Toblerone logo… the guys eating nachos in the Tostitos logo… the A arrow Z in Amazon… and so forth. I am not sure much is gained in finding these. I don’t think much was added. As far as this logo, I would also add that the overlay of the flag required some transparent imagine which is not ideal.
-Using a national flag can be problematic. First, for some people, a flag is a symbol of nationalism. The fact that we are in the Philippines does not mean that we are linking ourselves necessarily to the nation-state. I know for some people this does not matter. They will throw their national flag over their FB profile, hang it from the back of their pick-up trucks, and display it in front of their church right next to the cross. That is up to them… but that is not an association that we are seeking to make. There is an additional problem in that according to the heraldic law of the Philippines, one is really not supposed to use a Philippine flag in one’s logo anyway.
Therefore, we went in a somewhat different direction. We used the colors of the Philippine flag and tied it to the CPSP logo, but without the design features of the flag.
We went with this for a long time… several years. However, one day, one of our leaders decided to share something with me. He noted that when a Philippine flag is hanging, the blue is viewed to the left and the red to the right. The orientation of the logo above is red on the left and blue on the right. That is only to be done in times of war/conflict.
My first reaction was “This is not a flag”— it is a logo using the colors of the Philippine flag!” But the more I thought about it, the more I saw that it needed to change.
We are a Christian ministry. Now some Christian organizations really like to embrace the “War” metaphor. This is not necessarily wrong— it is used sometimes in the Bible. But that metaphor does suggest a certain orientation with regard to the world around. It suggests a certain hostility. And I get why some may want that message. Some groups really like to embrace Spiritual Warfare as their understanding of the world, and their participation in the world.
But that is not what we want to say. Our focus is on “Cure of Soul.” That is, we seek to participate in God’s work to heal persons in community. We are focused less on warfare and more on peacemaking (and not “peacemaking” as a euphemism for warfare).
Therefore, I finally got around to changing it.
The symbol is pretty simple. However, it tries to link three ideas together.
— It seeks to link our organization to CPSP while still making it clear that we are separate.
— It seeks to link our organization to the Philippines without appearing to link to politics or nation-state.
— It seeks to show, in a subtle way, that we are seeking to be peacemakers… healers.
Symbols mean something. When people see one, they don’t just see it, they interact with it. In Christian ministry, symbols should never be taken lightly. They often inform in powerful ways… often in ways that we don’t intend.
