Here, we present our thought process in developing the logo for FECT as we think about how to work on the next iteration. We seek a representation of the work of FECT in environment, climate, technology and society in a specific region.

It is a challenge to capture what FECT is in a logo. We shall invariably fall short. We have expertise on climate, environment, and technology and utilize our knowledge for the betterment of the society and the environment we live in.

Our first logo was designed in-house by an IT person in a rush around 2006 and had an image of part of the atmosphere from satellite with another false colour satellite image of Sri Lanka inset. This gave a sense of region, climate and environment. But it was crowded and reproduced poorly in black and white and smaller scale.

Our second logo was designed by Aysha Zackariya (https://studiokettle.com.au/) in 2014 and it simply shows a representation of the Indian Ocean and peninsula. By 2014 our focus had expanded to the Indian Ocean Islands and its littoral with a particular emphasis on Maldives, Comoros and Chagos. We had aspirations to work in Zanzibar, Seychelles, Mauritius and Réunion Island. All these are small island nations nonetheless, they have much larger territorial seas and Exclusive Economic Zones.

We saw an opportunity in breaking from unquestioned norms arising from the European geographers. These norms are tied to a preference to center and enlarge Europe when choosing the options to distort the 2-D representation of the spherical earth. Humans tend to consider that land is more important and ocean much less. This is an opportunity to show that FECT as an organization works from fundamentals and is willing to break from norms. The representation of geography can be used to distort one’s perception.

Some Sri Lankans too tend to mythologize how miniscule the island is. How it is simply a  “tear drop of the Indian Ocean” or a “pearl in the Indian Ocean”. This may be fine as metaphors and for poets but, doing so diminishes the role of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean and the world and diminishes the importance of the country.

Sri Lanka may look insignificant in relation to its neighbours but it has more people than ⅔ of the other countries. Indeed, it has more land than ⅓ of the other countries and if you account for the exclusive economic zone Sri Lanka too is in the top ⅓ of the countries. If you count the number of seas, then it climbs up the rank even further.

Sri Lanka occupies a pivotal place in the Indian Ocean’s oceanography and is the observational site for humans for large swathe of the earth between the Himalayas and the Antarctic.

A similar story holds for Maldives and the other islands in the Indian Ocean.

To sum up, we are still falling short with the FECT logo. Presently, we are showing geography of our focus, our willingness to think afresh, our use of technology but we are not showing society or environment. Logo design has advanced enormously and the FECT logo can catch up with the new tools in hand.