A deeper dive on the new IOCG logo

The International Organisation for Crystal Growth (IOCG) was founded in 1971, during the third International Conference on Crystal Growth, which was held in Marseille, France. At some time, now lost in history, a logo was put together, looking like this:

This logo represented crystal growth by beautiful images of natural snowflakes within a palette of blue and teal colors. While this logo capably served the “Organisation” for circa 50 years, the original artwork has been lost, the artist is unknown, and only low-resolution digital images are available.

After joining the IOCG Executive Committee, Professor Jeffrey Derby felt that the “Organization” (apologies to the founders for the Americanization of spelling) needed a high-resolution update and asked his daughter, Elizabeth Derby, a part-time graphic designer (see https://www.littledipper.store), to come up with a new logo.

The first attempts used the snowflake for graphic inspiration and the original colors, as in the examples below:

The Executive Committee preferred the second design, but a closer examination of the image looked a bit odd to Derby, who noticed that the dendritic side-arm spacing seemed unnatural. Derby asked fellow committee member, Professor Gen Sazaki, an international expert on snowflakes, to assess whether the logo was physically consistent. Sazaki’s professional opinion, presented here (link to “24.03.22 Snow flakes.pdf”), is summarized below.

According to Sazaki, the side-arm spacing of a natural snowflake follows a characteristic length scale that comes about by comparing the diffusivity of water through vapor with the growth velocity of the snowflake, namely L = D/V. Since an individual snowflake usually grows under uniform conditions of temperature and supersaturation, this length scale is typically constant. Therefore, the image in the new logo should follow the relationship L1=L2=L3=L4, which was not the case, as shown in the first image below:

This was corrected, but a new issue arose when Prof. Kevin Roberts, who had been contacted about the origins of the original IOCG log, pointed out that the new IOCG snowflake was very similar to that used by the British Association for Crystal Growth for the BACG logo (see second image above).

To make the IOCG logo look different from the BACG logo, Prof. Elias Vlieg, current IOCG President, suggested that we rotate our snowflake by 30 degrees, a suggestion endorsed by the Executive Committee. Hence, the final version, inspired by the form and color of the original logo, true to the physical laws of nature, and distinct from the BACG logo, is featured below and throughout the IOCG website. We hope it will serve us for another 50 years or longer!