While the United States, UK and Canada have enjoyed the presence of design organizations for many decades now, the idea of an overarching entity that represents and stands behind the practice of graphic design is a recent one for some countries, one of them Indonesia, who saw the introduction of Design Grafis Indonesia (DGI) in 2007 when it was founded by one of its most celebrated representatives, Hanny Kardinata.

While the United States, UK and Canada have enjoyed the presence of design organizations for many decades now, the idea of an overarching entity that represents and stands behind the practice of graphic design is a recent one for some countries, one of them Indonesia, who saw the introduction of Design Grafis Indonesia (DGI) in 2007 when it was founded by one of its most celebrated representatives, Hanny Kardinata. Its mission is to “Foster understanding among Indonesian graphic designers and its juncture in art, design, culture and society.” With a very active web presence, DGI has established itself as the main source of Indonesia graphic design, even hosting a magnificent gallery of projects dating back to the 1930s. This month, DGI presented a new identity that replaces the default typography generated by the blogging platform of their site.

The symbol of Ancient Javanese Kingdom in the city of Yogyakarta.

The big idea behind the identity of DGI is very simple. Indonesia Graphic Design is a part of the international graphic design scene. The approach of ligature between “DG” — representing Desain Grafis or Graphic Design in general and “i” representing Indonesia in specific — explains the unification in a very unique way. Why is unique? The shape of ligature or single glyph joined from the serif typeface of those three letters defines a cultural Indonesian Javanese graphic style (curved circle) that used to be applied for every most important of decoration included the symbol of Ancient Javanese Kingdom in the city of Yogyakarta. Most people in Indonesia will see the single glyph as part of ethnic decoration but now, more than that, it is also a function representing the unification of the three letters.
— From DGI materials provided

I have the sense that I may be in the minority — although I am continually surprised by the reactions here — and I think this is a great logo, a throwback to the simple, clever way of doing visually interesting monograms that are rarely seen nowadays. It could be argued that it has an antiquated feeling, I mean who uses serif typefaces anymore, right? Whatever it is about it, I find it an elegant and bold logo very appropriate to represent a design organization, designed by Henricus Kusbiantoro, who is the Creative Director at DGI. Plus, looking at the DGI ligature in detail, there are no bad bezier curves and is executed efficiently and cleanly, more than can be said for some of the things we see around here from time to time by bigger organizations.

The distinctive DGI Identity is transformed to five design elements that express the flexibility representing the diversity of Indonesia as the world’s largest archipelago. The five elements are inspired from highlights of Indonesia heritage spots: UBUD (in Bali, well known with the rice terrace), BOROBUDUR (the world’s largest Buddhist temple), JAKARTA (The Busy Capital), SENTANI (in West New Guinea, still as one of the world’s most primitive culture remain) and PARAKAN (one of the very authentic Javanese village in Central Java).

This visual exploration is interesting, but I think it’s not as elegant as the mark itself. Perhaps it’s simply that the logo has been used as an outline and it just doesn’t hold the same impact. Nonetheless, these are the kind of elements that can change and evolve, and it has a strong foundation to grow on.

Founder Hanny Kardinata, middle, with new t-shirt.

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A Ligature for Graphic Design in Indonesia