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October 2005

Reflecting ASJA's Identity

As I write this, ASJA is working with a graphic designer to create a new logo for the organization. Our old logo, despite occasional tweaking, has grown outdated.

We expect a great deal from our logo, and we've placed heavy demands on the designer. In a small amount of space, the new logo will ideally convey ASJA's purpose in a memorable way. It will attract attention. Just as important, the logo will make a statement about ASJA's character or personality.

Our designer is creative and skillful. But some of the early drafts I saw of the logo-in-progress shared a bothersome shortcoming: They appeared too corporate. I said so in an online discussion of the design. Another ASJA member questioned what I meant. I had to rack my brain to provide a coherent answer.

Now, I am not opposed to corporations and the business they conduct. Like all of us, I benefit from their services and products (although there are a few corporations I love to hate). I am a shareholder of several corporations, and others rank among my best clients. After some intense thinking—a process I often find painful and unnatural—I realized what I meant by describing the early designs as overly corporate.

Corporations are all about the massing of human effort, the obliteration of the value of the individual. The stylized name across the back end of an automobile or the claim of origin we find on a computer case says nothing about the individuals who conceived, designed and crafted these products. Instead, we find an imposing, bigger-than-life corporate logo, which often conveys supremacy, uniformity and ponderous weight. These are not qualities we associate with individuals. To my surprise, I suddenly understood that they are also not qualities I associate with ASJA.

Maybe it was obvious to everyone else involved in this quest for a new ASJA logo, but I became conscious rather late in the game that judging logo designs was an exercise in grasping ASJA's identity. I'm not referring to the organization's graphic identity that will find a home on our printed materials and Web site, but the real identity that tells us what we think of ourselves. Logo number one was too imposing—that's not us. Logo number two was too slight and undistinguished—that's not us, either. Then what are we?

Years ago I read that TV personality Barbara Walters was fond of asking her interview subjects, "If you could be a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" I have since heard that this is an urban legend of journalism, that Walters has asked that silly and formulaic question only once, and she instantly regretted it. But the question suggests an interesting exercise that might help define ASJA's personality.

If ASJA were a writer, which writer would it be? I've considered some possibilities:

Tom Clancy. No way. Not nearly enough introspection and personal involvement in his novels. Lots of flash and action, no soul.

Emily Bronte. She is too mysterious, too willing to dwell in the world's darkness and suffering. But her passion feels right.

Mark Twain. Getting closer. A writer full of honest wisdom and humor. Often misanthropy creeps into his work, though. That's not us.

David Sedaris. Another humorist, which is good. He clearly likes the human race. He almost always writes about David Sedaris, though, a preoccupation with one's self that doesn't feel much like ASJA.

Toni Morrison. She's got imagination and the ability to show life's grit and beauty, but can a Nobel Prize winner represent an organization serving the essential needs of workaday writers?

Jessica Mitford. Have you ever read The American Way of Death? It's the work of an independent journalist who wishes to improve the world through the use of her sharp senses, curiosity, and fondness for the human race, despite its many failings. In my mind, she is the closest writerly embodiment of ASJA there is.

So perhaps I should direct our logo designer to think about Jessica Mitford and to even read The American Way of Death. It's an unusual request, but maybe it would help.

JACK EL-HAI of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is president of ASJA. E-mail the president through www.asja.org/contact.php.