From the Vault: Furman’s Diamond F Logo Turns 50

One spring day in 1973, Dennis Zeiger ’74, a quarter-miler on the Furman track team and an art major, walked through Alley Gym and past the football coaches’ offices on his way to the track locker room. Assistant coach Steve Robertson saw Zeiger and called him into his office. New head football coach Art Baker was turning around a team that went 2-9 the fall before.

“The team needs a new image,” Robertson told Zeiger. That meant a new logo. The design at the time, an “F” on a shield, had the bitter taste of too many lopsided losses lingering on its metaphorical tongue.

“I want something simple, like the Dallas Cowboys’ star. Can ya help us out?”

“I’ll give it my best shot,” said Zeiger. You might call him Diamond Dennis for the contribution he was about to make to his university.

Back in his dorm room, Zeiger pulled out a sketch pad and noodled Robertson’s sparse direction. He grabbed a nearby saucer and traced an arc with its curve. Then he drew an intersecting arc. “I kinda like the way that’s looking,” he said to himself.

Soon he had drawn a diamond, and the concept began to take shape.

Between classes and track practices, Zeiger stylized several “F’s” inside the diamond and settled on one.

Two weeks after he first talked with Robertson, Zeiger was back in the coach’s office.

“Yeah, I like that,” Robertson said. “How much do we owe ya?”

Zeiger scratched his head. The art had only taken a few hours.

“How about $25?”

More than 50 years later, Zeiger sometimes laments how little he charged for the design.

After graduation, Zeiger sold sneakers and strung tennis rackets at Sam Wyche Sports World until a job 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.

In 2003, the university registered the Diamond F as a trademark, giving it “permanent space as an official logo along with its earned space as the most recognized icon for the Furman brand,” says Elizabeth Lichtenberg, senior director of brand strategy and visual communications in Furman’s University Communications Office. “It has prominence on marketing materials, is on more than 1,500 purchasable items and has even more presence on graphics all over campus.”

For many years, Zeiger didn’t think much about his role in Furman’s logo.

“I don’t need to be out front on things,” Diamond Dennis says. “But as I’ve gotten older and it’s become more prevalent around the school, I do have a lot of pride that I was able to do that. Of the things I’ve done in my life, that’s one of the things I’m most proud of. Fifty years later, it’s still going strong.”