A Geneva idea, carried home in 1881.

The American Red Cross is the United States branch of a movement that began in Geneva in 1863. English Wikipedia says Clara Barton founded the American organisation in 1881 after learning of the Red Cross in Switzerland, and that she became president of the society then called the American National Red Cross in May 1881 in Washington. A 1987 biography by the Maryland Commission for Women, published by the Maryland State Archives, says Barton went to Europe in 1869, became involved there with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on her return worked to create the American branch, which was established in 1881.

Wikipedia dates the founding meeting to 21 May 1881 and records that a local chapter was set up later that year at the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Dansville, New York. The Maryland biography dates Barton’s presidency from 1882 to 1904; Wikipedia has her in the post from 1881. Either way, she led the society through its early decades, and the Maryland text says she came to see that its services could be used in peacetime as well as in war, for people affected by natural disasters and epidemics. After leaving the Red Cross she established the National First Aid Society, whose mission the biography says was later folded into that of the American Red Cross.

The organisation’s base moved with her. The Maryland biography describes Barton’s house at Glen Echo, Maryland, as a three-storey building that served as a dormitory for Red Cross volunteers, a warehouse for supplies and a headquarters for the organisation. The site is now administered by the National Park Service as the Clara Barton National Historic Site, which keeps a building from the organisation’s early decades in public care.

A charter, a statute and a national headquarters.

The American Red Cross occupies an unusual legal position for a charity, and much of its brand rests on it. An Osgoode Hall Law School blog post from November 2007 explains that the organisation’s right to the emblem flows from its 1900 Congressional charter, which tied the red cross design to its voluntary relief work. Federal criminal law adds a second layer. Section 706 of Title 18 of the United States Code, enacted in 1948 and based on an Act of 5 January 1905, makes it an offence for anyone other than the American National Red Cross and the medical authorities of the U.S. armed forces to use “the emblem of the Greek red cross on a white ground”, any imitation of it, or the words “Red Cross” or “Geneva Cross”. The same section covers anyone who wears the sign to pass themselves off as a member or agent of the organisation, and it leaves alone uses that were already lawful when the statute was enacted.

Wikipedia names Mabel Thorp Boardman as the leader who followed Barton and who consulted government officials, military officers, social workers and financiers about its direction. Jane Delano founded the American Red Cross Nursing Service on 20 January 1910, and on 10 May 1917 President Woodrow Wilson created the American Red Cross War Council to direct its wartime activities. Wikipedia also records that John D. Rockefeller and four others gave money toward a national headquarters near the White House.

The red cross is also a commercial mark in another company’s history. In August 2007 Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over its licensing of the emblem for first-aid products, and Wikipedia records that a federal judge ruled against Johnson & Johnson in May 2008 and that the two announced a settlement in June 2008 allowing both to use the symbol.

Design and documentation.

Charity identities live in public in a way few commercial marks do. An emblem has to read at the size of a lapel pin and at the size of a banner across a street, and it often has to survive being redrawn by volunteers with whatever paint, felt or tape is to hand. That is why so many charity marks rely on one strong shape and one strong colour: a simple silhouette holds up when it is stencilled onto a collection tin, printed on a sticker or stitched onto a cap.

Collection boxes and tins are small pieces of packaging design. They carry the mark, a short line of copy and a slot, and they are seen for a second or two as someone walks past. Volunteer uniforms do similar work at human scale: a coloured vest, a lanyard or a printed T-shirt tells a passer-by who to approach at an event or a shop counter.

Campaign posters are where charity identities stretch. Photography, hand lettering and bold headlines change from season to season, while the emblem, the name and the core colour stay fixed in a corner. Reading a charity brand well means noticing which elements move and which never do.

One emblem, two meanings and a wordmark beside it.

The heart of the identity is not a logo drawn for the American organisation at all. English Wikipedia says the red cross on a white ground has been recognised as a protection emblem since the First Geneva Convention of 1864, and that the design reverses the colours of the Swiss flag. The wider movement later recognised the Red Crescent in 1929 and the Red Crystal in 2005. So a national society such as the American Red Cross works with a mark it shares with armies, hospitals and sister societies around the world, rather than a symbol it owns outright.

Wikipedia distinguishes two uses of that mark. The protective use marks people, buildings and vehicles in armed conflict as working under the Geneva Conventions; the indicative use shows only that a person or object is linked to a Red Cross or Red Crescent society. When the emblem appears on a chapter office, a blood-drive banner or a volunteer’s vest in the United States, it is the indicative use — the everyday register of the American Red Cross, where the cross appears next to the organisation’s name. Wikipedia also notes friction caused when American hospitals, first-aid teams and ski patrols reverse the symbol to a white cross on red, which undoes the original reversal of the Swiss flag and suggests a link to Switzerland instead.

The statute shapes how the mark can be handled. Section 706 protects the red cross on a white ground and imitations of it, as well as the words “Red Cross” and “Geneva Cross”, so the emblem, the name and the colours travel together under the same legal protection in the United States. The Osgoode blog post of 2007 describes the 1900 charter as tying the design to the organisation’s voluntary relief work, the same link that runs through its chapters, nursing service and wartime council.

For a design guide, the American Red Cross shows how an organisation can build a national identity on an emblem that belongs to an international treaty and is protected by statute at home, with the name doing the work that a custom symbol would do elsewhere. Compare it with UNICEF, another identity built for international relief, and The Salvation Army, whose red shield also marks volunteers in uniform. For this guide we use emblem red, field white and slate grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep American Red Cross’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.