A medical school, a college, two universities and a merger.

The National University of Singapore carries a name from 1980, but its institutional story starts with a medical school. The National Library Board’s Infopedia entry on the university, written by Pattarin Kusolpalin, says that in 1904 the Straits Chinese businessman and philanthropist Tan Jiak Kim petitioned the colonial government for a medical school in Singapore, and that money was raised through donations from Tan and other members of the Chinese community. English Wikipedia dates the school’s founding to 3 July 1905; Infopedia records that the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School was officially opened on 28 September 1905. Both dates belong to the same founding year, one marking the start and the other the formal opening.

The name then changed several times. Infopedia says the school became the King Edward VII Medical School in 1913, partly in recognition of a gift from the King Edward VII Memorial Fund and partly because it had been set up during that king’s reign. In 1921 it became the King Edward VII Medical College, a title chosen to reflect university-standard teaching. A second institution, Raffles College, opened on 22 July 1929 to teach the arts and sciences, on a Bukit Timah campus that Infopedia credits to the architects Cyril A. Farey and Graham R. Dawbarn.

On 8 October 1949 the medical college and Raffles College were merged to form the University of Malaya. A division in Kuala Lumpur followed, and Infopedia says the two divisions became autonomous on 15 January 1959. On 1 January 1962 the Singapore division was formally established as the University of Singapore, alongside a separate University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.

The last step came in 1980. Infopedia says a 1979 study by the British academic Frederick Dainton recommended a single university with a wide range of disciplines, that the government announced in April 1980 that the University of Singapore and Nanyang University would be merged, and that Parliament passed the National University of Singapore Bill on 29 July 1980. The library entry gives 8 August 1980 as the date the new university was officially established and inaugurated; English Wikipedia gives 6 August 1980 for the merger itself. Nanyang University, known in Chinese shorthand as Nan-tah, had been established in 1955, according to Wikipedia.

A lion, an open book and three interlaced rings.

The coat of arms is where those layers show plainly. English Wikipedia says the arms of the National University of Singapore were adopted in 1980 and modernised in 2001, and that they combine elements from two predecessors rather than starting afresh.

From the University of Singapore side come an open book and a lion. Wikipedia says the University of Singapore used arms with those two charges from 1962, and that they were in turn derived from the arms of the University of Malaya used between 1949 and 1962, which showed a tiger in place of the lion.

From the Nanyang University side comes the emblem of three interlaced rings. Wikipedia says the NUS arms take Nanyang’s rings but leave out the star that had accompanied them since 1955, and the article on the university’s history says the original Nanyang crest with three intertwined rings was incorporated into the new arms at the merger. In the finished shield the Nanyang rings sit in the upper band, beside the book.

In plain English the blazon describes a silver shield with a lion walking and looking out at the viewer, in natural colours; above it, a blue band carrying an open book, bound, edged and clasped in gold, on one side, and the three silver rings, interlaced one above two, on the other. Wikipedia gives the meanings attached to each charge: the lion stands for NUS as a Singaporean university, the open book for knowledge, and the three rings for the university’s role in creating, imparting and applying knowledge, as well as for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Arms, merged identities, colours and sports marks.

University identities tend to grow in layers rather than arrive in one piece. The earliest layer is usually heraldic: a coat of arms or seal, granted or registered by a heraldic authority, with a blazon that fixes the charges and tinctures in words while leaving the exact drawing to the artist. Books, crowns, beasts and rings recur because they were chosen to say something about learning, patronage or place, and a motto in Latin or another language often sits on a scroll beneath.

A second layer appears when institutions merge. A combined university may keep a charge from each predecessor, redraw the shield in a single style, or retire one emblem altogether, and the arms then read as a short history of the merger.

A third layer is the everyday identity: a wordmark, a typeface family and a set of house colours used on websites, signage and stationery. Official colours can be defined by academic dress, by a style guide, or simply by long use. Athletics teams often add a fourth layer of their own, with mascots and sports marks that change more often than the arms.

Two campuses’ worth of history and a single shield.

The places behind the name are part of the identity too. Infopedia says the medical school began on the grounds of a former asylum at Sepoy Lines, near what is now Outram, and that after 1962 the University of Singapore taught across four separate campuses. A site at Kent Ridge was secured in 1968, the campus was designed by S. J. van Embden, and construction began in 1973. After the 1980 merger NUS still ran from Kent Ridge, Sepoy Lines and Bukit Timah; the medical and dental faculties moved to Kent Ridge when the National University Hospital opened in 1985, and in 2000 the university held its convocation at Kent Ridge in the newly opened University Cultural Centre.

Infopedia also records a change in status that sits behind the present institution: on 1 April 2006 NUS became a corporatised, not-for-profit, autonomous university, following a government review of how publicly funded universities should be governed.

For a design reader, the arms show how a merged university can carry its history in one emblem. The predecessors are not listed in words; they are present as charges, each with a stated meaning, and Wikipedia says the arms were modernised in 2001 while keeping the lion, book and rings.

For a design guide, the National University of Singapore shows a shield built from two predecessors, a lion that replaced an earlier tiger, and a ring emblem carried over from a merged institution. Compare it with the arms of the University of Edinburgh, with the University of Tokyo in Asia, and with the University of Oxford, whose open book is another long-lived academic charge. For this guide we use azure, a warm orange and argent white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep National University of Singapore’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.