![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2023\/09\/Dennis-Zeiger_10-small.jpg\")
Dennis Zeiger ’74 and a pin of his Diamond F design.<\/p><\/div>\n
Back in his dorm room, Zeiger pulled out a sketch pad and noodled Coach Robertson\u2019s sparse direction. He grabbed a nearby saucer and traced an arc with its curve. Then he drew an intersecting arc. \u201cI kinda like the way that\u2019s looking,\u201d he said to himself.<\/p>\n
Soon he had drawn a diamond form and the concept began to take shape.<\/p>\n
Between classes and track practices, Zeiger stylized several \u201cF”s inside the diamond and settled on one. He drew his new logo with a fine-nibbed art pen on clay-coated paper. With an X-Acto knife he scraped away the clay to give the diamond sharp points.<\/p>\n
Two weeks after he first talked with Robertson, Zeiger was back in the coach\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I like that,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cHow much do we owe ya?\u201d<\/p>\n
Zeigler scratched his head. The art had only taken a few hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about $25?\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty-five bucks filled up Zeiger\u2019s blue Plymouth Belvedere with gas and funded a few trips to the Rainbow Drive-In, a restaurant and student hangout on Poinsett Highway. In today\u2019s money, it\u2019s about $172, which also might buy a tank of gas and a few hamburgers.<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, Zeiger sometimes laments how little he charged for the design. The short-distance runner didn\u2019t expect his design, which first appeared on football helmets in the fall of 1973, to be around for the long haul. \u201cI thought it would last a few years, until another coach wanted another new image,\u201d Zeiger said one recent afternoon in the Dining Hall.<\/p>\n
After graduation, Zeiger sold sneakers and strung tennis rackets at Sam Wyche Sports World until an opportunity at an advertising agency came along. Over the next couple of decades, he worked for a couple of agencies, had a couple of kids and went to a lot of Paladin football and basketball games. In 2005 he went to work overseeing marketing for a small Spartanburg company called Polydeck and loved it. He retired in 2019.<\/p>\n
In 2003, the university registered the Diamond F as a trademark, giving it \u201cpermanent space as an official logo along with its earned space as the most recognized icon for the Furman brand. It has prominence on marketing materials, is on more than 1,500 purchasable items and has even more presence on graphics all over campus,\u201d said Elizabeth Lichtenberg, senior director of brand strategy and visual communications in Furman\u2019s University Communications. She introduced the Paladin head as a secondary sports logo 10 years ago. It is to the Diamond F what Uga the bulldog is to the University of Georgia\u2019s \u201cG.\u201d<\/p>\n
People gravitate toward the Diamond F because of its simple, classic shape, with the F as the undisputed hero of the design, Lichtenberg said. But whether it\u2019s Nike\u2019s Swoosh, McDonald\u2019s arches or Dennis\u2019s Diamond, a logo is just an image until it \u201cseeds itself and becomes a part of the brand, part of the personality, with affinity and nostalgia built around it,\u201d Lichtenberg said. \u201cIt\u2019s the people that touch the brand that make it into something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zeiger saw the logo cast in the exterior of the Pearce-Horton Football Complex when it was under construction and thought, \u201cwell, I guess it\u2019s here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many years, Zeiger didn\u2019t think much about his role in Furman\u2019s logo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a behind-the-scenes kind of person,\u201d Diamond Dennis said. \u201cI don\u2019t need to be out front on things. …. But as I\u2019ve gotten older and it\u2019s become more prevalent around the school, I do have a lot of pride that I was able to do that. Of the things I\u2019ve done in my life, that\u2019s one of the things I\u2019m most proud of. Fifty years later it\u2019s still going strong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a junior in 1973, Dennis Zeiger was asked to design a simple new logo that would help create a new image for Furman football. He created an enduring icon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":27743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,60,45,24],"tags":[2025,2303,2302,2301],"class_list":["post-27740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-alumni-profiles","category-art","category-athletics","tag-branding","tag-dennis-zeiger","tag-diamond-f","tag-logo"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}