A federal school that changed its name once.

ETH Zurich was founded by the Swiss Confederation, and English Wikipedia dates the founding to 7 February 1854 and the start of lectures to 16 October 1855, when the school began teaching at various sites around Zurich as a federal polytechnic, the eidgenössische polytechnische Schule. German Wikipedia gives the founding year as 1855 and the founding name as Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum. The school started with six faculties: architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry, forestry, and a combined department for mathematics, natural sciences, literature and social and political sciences.

That founding name explains a nickname that survived long after it stopped being official. Locally the school was known as the Polytechnikum, or simply the Poly, Wikipedia says. In 1911, after a long reform debate, it was renamed Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, the name behind the acronym ETH; German Wikipedia adds that “Poly” stayed in informal use into the 1970s. In English the institution is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and the German article lists its names in Switzerland’s other national languages too: École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich in French, Politecnico federale di Zurigo in Italian and Scola politecnica federala Turitg in Romansh. Across all of them the brand today leads with three letters and a city: ETH Zurich.

ETH is a federal institution under the direct administration of the Swiss government, and together with its sister school, the EPFL in Lausanne, and four associated research institutes it forms what is called the ETH Domain, Wikipedia records.

The school gained its own building within a few years of opening. The city and canton of Zurich held an architecture competition, German Wikipedia says, and Gottfried Semper, then a professor at the school and the architect of the Dresden opera house that bears his name, won it. The main building went up between 1858 and 1864 to his plans, and its south wing initially housed the existing University of Zurich. A later rebuilding added a new show façade towards Rämistrasse and the building’s characteristic dome, while the south façade facing the city was left unchanged.

A 150th anniversary and a brand name.

The school’s 150th anniversary was covered by swissinfo.ch, the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. In a report published on 21 April 2005, it said the anniversary celebrations had been officially launched, with a series of events to follow, and that the Swiss government had created the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1855. Speaking in Zurich at the launch, Swiss President Samuel Schmid called on the institute’s researchers to pay extra attention to the ethical questions raised by modern science, swissinfo reported.

The same report touches directly on branding. Meinrad Eberle, who oversaw preparations for the anniversary, told swissinfo that the institute faced competition for new students and that its roadshow, and to a larger extent the anniversary celebrations themselves, were also about marketing the institute’s brand name. The programme for the public was built around a series of scientific and cultural events titled “World of Knowledge” in the Platzspitz park near Zurich’s main station, including a musical that opened for a week on 25 June and a physics night on 17 June. The institute’s president, Olaf Kübler, said the results of a closing series of “Vision” meetings and workshops would feed into long-term strategic planning.

The report also names some of the scientists who studied or taught at the institute, among them Albert Einstein, Wilhelm Röntgen and Wolfgang Pauli. Einstein’s link with the school has a small physical memorial: German Wikipedia says his former locker on floor F of the main building was set up in 2018 as a mini-museum, using texts, pictures and music to give a glimpse of his life.

The anniversary also produced a history. Die Zukunftsmaschine. Konjunkturen der ETH Zürich 1855–2005, by David Gugerli, Patrick Kupper and Daniel Speich, was published in Zurich by Chronos in 2005 and is listed by Wikipedia as further reading, with an online companion at ethistory.ethz.ch. Its title translates as “the future machine”.

Logo, acronym, colours and type.

Many university marks borrow their imagery from the natural world. A leaf, a flower or a tree stands in for growth and continuity, and a cluster of stars can tie an institution to the sky above its home country. These motifs suit identity work because they reduce well: a single leaf or a handful of points can be drawn as a crisp outline that survives on a lanyard, a web favicon or an embroidered scarf, while the fuller heraldic version stays on degree certificates and ceremonial banners.

Latin mottos play a similar role in text form. A short phrase set in capitals beneath a shield signals continuity with older academic traditions, and designers often keep it on formal documents while dropping it from everyday digital layouts where space is tight.

Buildings and gateways also become symbols. A gate, a tower or a quadrangle that appears in photographs year after year can turn into a shorthand for the whole institution, sometimes appearing in merchandise, alumni publications and social media long before it enters any official logo. Colour completes the system: a named school colour gives teams, gowns and printed matter a shared thread even when the emblem itself changes.

One umbrella brand, black on white.

ETH Zurich runs its identity as a single umbrella brand. Its corporate design pages for staff, read in October 2026, say the guidelines are mandatory for all departments and central bodies and that organisational units are not intended to have logos of their own; they appear with the ETH logo and their name written out in full, and any unit logo that is used anyway must sit below the ETH logo. ETH-related organisations with their own legal personality may not use the corporate design. The school sums up the principle in a line on the logo page: “If it’s ETH Zurich inside, it should say ETH Zurich outside.”

The logo itself is treated as a protected asset. ETH says it represents the brand, is a registered trademark and may only be used to show a demonstrable, non-commercial institutional connection. It comes in two variants, black for light backgrounds and white for dark ones, and within the corporate design it always sits at the top left. Its clear space is set by the logo’s own letters: one height of the letter E of the ETH acronym on every side. The same unit fixes the gap when partner universities share a layout in an equal partnership, with their logos shown at the same optical size and further partners added to the right. Using the “ETH” acronym on its own, for social media or merchandise, needs the approval of Corporate Communications, and spin-offs and start-ups may carry an “ETH Spin-off” or “ETH Start-up” label to show their origin.

Colour is deliberately quiet. ETH says a black and white scheme is an integral part of its brand identity, starting with the black-on-white logo, and that single-colour applications should preferably use black and white. Seven corporate design colours may be used for emphasis or decoration, but subtly: ideally no more than two together, not for headlines, and always with white text on coloured backgrounds. Tints carry their own rules for legibility, with black lettering on 10, 20 and 40 per cent shades and white lettering from 80 per cent.

For a design guide, ETH Zurich shows how a federal polytechnic can carry a nineteenth-century nickname, a Semper building and a single black-on-white logo as one tightly governed brand; compare MIT for another technical institute with a letter-based identity, and the University of Cambridge for a logo that pairs heraldry with a name. For this guide we use black, white and a restrained blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ETH Zurich’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.