CS 50 Years was my entry into the University of Maryland Computer Science department's design competition, held to mark the program's 50th anniversary. The brief was open: design the mark that would represent the milestone across banners, merch, and event branding.
I'd taken CS courses before, so I started from something I actually recognized — the brackets that show up constantly in code — and looked at how other UMD departments handled their own marks, which mostly trended simple with a small piece of subject-specific imagery folded in. I tested drafts with CS major peers along the way; the feedback that stuck was to keep the “50” dominant, keep the lines clean and symmetrical, and avoid anything that read as too masculine or too feminine.
Early versions just encased the text in plain brackets, which felt flat. I ended up pulling pieces from a few different bracket styles — curly, square, parenthesis — and combined them into a badge-like crest, which read as celebratory instead of purely academic. Maryland's own Roboto handles the “Maryland” wordmark up top; Montserrat carries the bolder “CS 50 Years” type. The tri-color palette (red, gold, white) came straight off the university's own system.
