Amnesty International logo design
In 1963, Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International, wrote to a local member and artist to say that her design, a candle in barbed wire, had been chosen for Amnesty’s first ever Christmas card because of “its simplicity and the effectiveness of its symbolism”.
The artist was Diana Redhouse, who died in October 2007, aged 84.
The logo combines two recognisable images to convey complex notions: barbed wire communicates oppression, while a burning candle evokes hope. It was inspired by the Chinese proverb, “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness”.
The logo was redesigned in 2000 by Simon Endres, formerly of agency Kirshenbaum Bond, and now half of Pro-Am, Inc in New York. You can read an interview with ex-pat Kiwi, Simon, here on The Big Idea.
Further reading:
- The meaning of the Amnesty candle
- Artist found it better to light a candle
- Amnesty International on Wikipedia
Hosted by the excellent 
7 appreciated comments, click here to add one
Eric
Excellent logo and a great organization. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. – Eric
Eric’s last blog post…MTV reality show for graphic designers
Jun 15th, 2008
David Pache
A classic!
Jun 16th, 2008
Tracey Grady
Designing a logo for an international organisation would have challenges in terms of choosing symbols with true global recognition and appeal, something the AI logo achieves in a very elegant and timeless way.
Jun 16th, 2008
David Airey
You’re very welcome, Eric.
David,
A classic indeed. I’ll be featuring some more classic designs here soon, and this is the first in the category.
Tracey,
This logo is without doubt a timeless design. One of my favourites.
Jun 16th, 2008
Trish
Back in college, 1990 there bouts, a friend of mine wanted to start an Amnesty International club on campus and he asked me to design the logo for it. I came up with three sketches based on his ideas (I didn’t know what Amnesty International was at the time): barbed wire around an African woman’s face, barbed wire around the dove of peace and barbed wire around a candle. I tried to make the barbed wire make an “A” in all three sketches. I figured you could interpret an “I” as the woman’s profile, in the wire around the dove and the candle itself. The ideas never went beyond the sketches. I liked the first sketch the best and still have it somewhere in my college art file (not for the logo design but for the fine art aspect of it). I may have the other sketches, too, they were all in the same notebook; I just remember the first sketch the best because the profile came out so well and the barbed wire wove perfectly from her hair. Damn, I’m going to have to track those sketches down now.
I wonder where he is now and if he looks at this logo and goes, “If only!”. I would guess everyone has had this thought at one time or other.
Course I can’t help but look at this design and think of Brian all those years ago and the passionate way he described his design ideas to me at the time.
It was a good design idea then and it is a good design idea now.
Trish
Jun 16th, 2008
Kevin
A classic indeed. Great post!
Jun 17th, 2008
Daniel Campos
Great Post.
This blog is wonderful! Congratulation.
Daniel
Jun 18th, 2008
Reply to “Amnesty International logo design”
All comments are subject to the Logo Design Love comment policy.