Gerald Holtom

Another discovery I made during my research on my history of typography project was about the invention of the peace symbol.

I never really thought about how the peace symbol came to be in American history, but it has a really interesting background. The peace symbol was originally designed by Gerald Holtom, a british graphic designer in 1958 for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The inside of the circle is a combination made up of the semaphore letters N and D (for Nuclear Disarmament), meaning the flag signaling system.

It's interesting to see how a logo for an organization in Britain can be reinterpreted as a symbol of peace in America.