The British Crystallographic Association holds the copyright for the BCA logo. It should not be used without permission from the BCA president.

Design Competition

In the June 1983 issue of Crystallography News, the Secretary, Andrzej Skapski wrote:

There were 30 entries submitted to the Logo competition, they were on display throughout the meeting; a panel of 6 members representing different areas of crystallography were the judges, who recommened this design to the BCA Council who adopted it as the official logo at the Council Meeting held on 31st March 1983.

The design competition was won by Moreton Moore, with a design based on the Bravais lattice, something fundamental to all areas of crystallography.

Representation

The logo consists of a cube seen down the 3-fold body-diagonal with circles at each corner representing “atoms”. On the three visible faces are the three letters BCA representing the initials of the association. The corner points of the cube represent a primitive cubic Bravais lattice, a lattice being a key element of most crystal structures. Of the five Platonic solids, the choice of a cube is most appropriate as it is the one with the highest symmetry compatible with a 3-dimensional lattice.

Download

Large versions of the logo may be downloaded in one of the following formats: