Design for peace: origin of the UN emblem.

• Author: McLaughlin, Donal
• Position: 50th anniversary of the United Nations - Special 50th Anniversary Edition - Cover Story

Donal McLaughlin, Chief of the Graphics Presentation Branch of the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of the Second World War, has written a personal account of his participation in the two-month international conference that preceded the adoption of the United Nations Charter in June 1945. The following excerpts from that memoir focus on the origin of the familiar blue-and-white UN emblem and a backstage view of the Charter signing in the Herbst Theater of the Veterans War Memorial Building, which Mr McLaughlin helped arrange. Mr. McLaughlin, an architect and a graphic designer was born in 1907 and lives in Garrett Park, Maryland. A graduate of New York City public schools, the Yale School of Architecture and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design, he worked on designs for exhibits for the 1939 New York World's Fair, suburban department stores and the interior design of Tiffany's 57th Street store in Manhattan.

Early in 1945, our Presentation Branch was asked by Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. (who became a representative of the United States during the first session of the UN General Assembly) to work on the forthcoming United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO). As Chief of the Graphics Division and Art Director, it was my good fortune to be assigned to design a lapel pin for conference identification.

The design of the lapel pin - which unknown to us then would become the United Nations emblem - had a special meaning and significance for all of us in the Presentation Branch. United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt's idea of a United Nations was being hailed everywhere. Well, maybe not everywhere. But certainly among all liberals. And we were all young liberals.

I invited a brainstorming session so that our whole staff could have a crack at solving the "problem" of the lapel pin. The problem: how to incorporate a pictorial image along with the words, "The United Nations Conference on international Organization, San Francisco, 1945" (quite a mouthful) in a one and one-sixteenth-inch-diameter circle. The manufacturer had agreed to make the pin on condition that we use their stock lapel pin in view of the shortage of time. In other words, no odd or irregular shapes.

Some of the designs that came out of this session, and the problems that came with them, were as follows:

One design showed a globe surrounded by chains representing nations linked in peace. The problem was that it also...