24 August 2021

A redesign of the Rice shield

Back in 2016, I thought that the Rice University shield could use a redesign. Here’s what it looked like at the time:

Here is my redesigned version:

I took inspiration from the University’s older identities and wanted to produce a more timeless design that would work on both screens and paper at different sizes. My work got some attention from other students at the time, but I never pitched it to the University as a potential replacement. A couple of years ago, Rice updated their official shield to this:

It’s better than the previous one, and it hits some of the targets I had in mind. But if Rice ever does get interested in my redesign, I’m ready to talk.

Below are some of the old resources I used for inspiration.

An early sketch of Rice’s academic seal:

A version of the Rice shield used before the one that was current in 2016:

The Rice Athenian owl: