ron cobb and the designing of the ecology symbol

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Es­ti­mated reading time is 2 min­utes.

THE ECOLOGY SYMBOL has been with us so long that it looks and feels rather an­cient. That it re­sem­bles the Greek letter theta, which has been around for thou­sands of years, cer­tainly helps with its look of an­tiq­uity. In fact, it is less than fifty years old, an­other piece of today that orig­i­nated with the hippie-counterculture move­ment of The Sixties.

The lower-case ‘e’ in­side a circle was de­signed by artist Ron Cobb in 1969 and was quickly adopted by the nascent Earth Day and ecology move­ment as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive symbol.

Even in 1969, Ron Cobb was a legend, his ed­i­to­rial car­toons for the Los An­geles Free Press seemed to find their way into un­der­ground news­pa­pers around the world.

 

Who would have thought that ed­i­tors of Look mag­a­zine would con­tribute any­thing to the counterculture?

 

Cobb did not de­sign the symbol for the Earth Day move­ment, which was merely an idea in 1969. The art was done as a front-page il­lus­tra­tion to plug the or­ga­ni­za­tion of a local “ecology ac­tion” group and first ap­peared in No­vember 1969 in the Free Press.

 

RonCobb EcologySymbol FreePress Nov1969 500

The No­vember 1969 issue of the Los An­geles Free Press led with the ru­mors of Paul Mc­Cart­ney’s death in a an au­to­mo­bile ac­ci­dent three years be­fore. Mort Sahl was still big enough to war­rant front page no­ti­fi­ca­tion of an interview.

 

RonCobb EcologySymbol poster 600

Sawyer Press, a small printing com­pany in Los An­geles of­fered a 22.5 x 22.5-inch poster of the Cobb page in ei­ther 1969 or ’70. Ap­par­ently, the en­tire first run of posters was on or­ange paper.

 

RonCobb EcologySymbol 600

I have in­cluded this black and white image for those readers who want to en­large the image and read Cobb’s text.

 

RonCobb EcologySymbol flag 1500

The April 21, 1970, issue of Look was the mag­a­zine’s first Earth Day issue and in­cluded the now well-known Ecology Flag. (Who would have thought that the ever-staid ed­i­tors of Look would con­tribute any­thing to the counterculture?)

Nearly ubiquitous

The ecology symbol spread around the world, taking hold among en­vi­ron­mental groups every­where. It quickly be­came well known, if not nearly ubiq­ui­tous, and could be found in all the usual places that such a fad would turn up, es­pe­cially on pin-back but­tons. Decades later and it can be found on shirts, bumper stickers, jew­elry, posters, etc.

Thank you, Ron Cobb . . .

Ron Cobb did not de­sign the now ubiq­ui­tous ecology symbol for the Earth Day move­ment. Click To Tweet

RonCobb EcologyFlag EarthDayFlag 800

FEA­TURED IMAGE: At a#NoKXL (No Key­stone XL Pipeline) Rally held in Wash­ington, DC, on Feb­ruary 17, 2013, a pole flew the Earth Flag, the Ecology Flag, and the DC State­hood Green Party Flag in front of the White House.

 

2 thoughts on “ron cobb and the designing of the ecology symbol”

  1. I was there!

    12 years old, a love for na­ture nur­tured by Jacques Cousteau and the Ca­lypso, Marlin Perk­in’s Wild Kingdom, all that the Boy Scouts en­cap­su­lated, and my fa­ther’s sto­ries of Jack London, Thompson Seton, and Robert Ser­vice. My mother sewed my Ecology Flag patch on the shoulder of my fa­ther’s WWII army field jacket that I wore as a fledg­ling hippy.

    At the age of 13, I was talking about the dan­gers of water and air pol­lu­tion, dwin­dling nat­ural re­sources, and the loss of wilder­ness habitat to urban ex­pan­sion and unchecked pop­u­la­tion growth!!

    The world didn’t listen.

    An old man now, the carbon foot­print of my en­tire life is less than that of John Kerry, Al Gore, or Klaus Schwab in a single year.

    The world’s not lis­tening now.

    I’m a staunch, ar­dent Theist, wor­shiping a Great Spirit who looked down on this blue and green marble and de­clared it “very good”; I look with joy for those Eyl­sian Fields and Happy Hunting Grounds on the other side . . . and cor­rup­tion will be no more.

    Reply
    • Thanks for the comment.

      The only way I see us es­caping our plight is through alien or di­vine in­ter­ven­tion (and I am closer to being a Deist than a Theist).

      Hang in there and al­ways keep on keepin’ on ...

      Reply

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