HUPO History

History of the HUPO logo

Author: Young-Ki Paik, Yonsei Proteome Research Center, Yonsei University, Republic of Korea

The current HUPO logo was created on July 24, 2001 while Prof. Sam Hanash was serving his first year as HUPO Inaugural President (2001-2004). Sometime in June, Prof. Sam Hanash (Sam) and Prof. Young-Ki Paik (Young-Ki), HUPO Secretary General (2001-2006), discussed the idea of creating a HUPO logo. After this chat, Young-Ki started looking for a reputable and successful branding and naming company in Seoul, Korea. One day, Dr. Sang Yun Cho, one of Young-Ki’s staff members at Yonsei Proteome Research Center (Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea), introduced Prof. Hyewon Sohn, CEO of Crosspoint International Branding and Design Company, located at Hongick University, near YPRC. Her company had had much previous success creating names and logos for major famous companies. Young-Ki met Prof. Sohn and her colleague, Mr. Seoung Woo Hong, and requested that they design the HUPO logo. She asked Mr. Hong, her associate, to do this work, and later he presented three different versions of the HUPO logo as seen in Fig. 1. Because Young-Ki wanted feedback on these three candidate HUPO logos from the proteomics experts, he put them to a vote at KHUPO’s inauguration meeting in Seoul on July 24, 2001. As seen in the image (Fig. 1), the current version received the majority of votes from the attendees at the inaugural KHUPO meeting. Young-Ki immediately sent the current HUPO logo to Sam for his approval. Sam and the HUPO Executive members very much liked it and accepted it as the official HUPO logo.

After the HUPO logo was created, KHUPO used it to produce the KHUPO logo simply by adding the letter ‘K’ in front of the HUPO logo. Young-Ki and KHUPO thanked both Prof. Sohn and her associate Seoung Woo Hong for their excellent work on the HUPO logo, which they did free of charge. Later on, as a gesture of appreciation to both, Young-Ki presented them with some compensatory gifts on behalf of the KHUPO members. Some years later, Young-Ki also formally offered to donate the logo to HUPO for permanent ownership. Sam and HUPO EC gladly accepted this HUPO logo and authorized it for HUPO administration.

Note that the 8 blue dots inside the letter “P” each symbolize one letter of the word “proteome”.

When HPP was launched in 2010 in Sydney HUPO Congress, Young-Ki’s team (Dr. Seul-Ki Jeong) created the current HPP and C-HPP logos by using the “P” (in blue color). The character, ‘P’ now becomes very popular letter for HUPO projects (Fig. 2)

Figure 1: Shown here are three candidates of HUPO logo which were subjected to voting by KHUPO members in 2001. The current version (middle) received the most popular votes and thus was taken by HUPO.

Figure 2: Types of Logos of HUPO, HPP and C-HPP