Increasingly Frustrated With CA Logo whoa, easy there with the Band-uh!... there's tradition to uphold.
:wink:
In all seriousness though, UC Davis did not have an official logo until 1999, when the C-Horse logo was introduced and the blue and gold were defined as specific hues. This was a committee project with students, staff, and a marketing company. It was consistent with the times. Photoshop and large format digital printers were becoming a thing so everyone wanted complex logos with shadows, gradients, etc.
For the 90 years or so before that, there were various iterations of CA logos, what I will call the "Block CA" with the A in the middle of the C, the "Interlocked CA" where the bottom of the C formed the cross of the A, the "Horse and Wheat CA" with a horse head and wheat stalk in the middle of the C and a small A in the open part of the C, and the "Lemon CA." The script "Davis" and "UCD" in block letters were also common. What did most of these have in common? They were easy for a non-artist to replicate by hand, whether stitching on a uniform or painting on a milk can.
Fast forward to today, logos once again need to be simple and speak for themselves without a caption, because they are seen most frequently on social media on 5" phone screens. I'm sure the powers that be realized the C-Horse was too complicated in tiny form and not widely recognized. There is also a trend among universities to brand their academics and athletics separately. So in the last few years (timing seemed to be about when Learfield got involved), athletics developed their own logo package with UC Davis in the "Invader" font (you could buy it for yourself if ya really want) as the primary mark and both the Lemon CA and C-Horse as secondary marks, although notice that athletics has modified the C-Horse to be a darker blue and less yellowy gold.
Here's several of the old logos seen together in an Enterprise photo
I'm partial to the Block CA, but I'm cool with the Lemon CA too. They have that timeless, needs no introduction look.