Members of the RUC are not the only people in the North with the problem of how to present a new face without offending those who liked the old.
Queen's University, currently suffering from a severe attack of political correctness, recently announced a new corporate identity. It dispensed, for everyday purposes, with the distinctively royal multicoloured coat of arms and replaced it with a modern logo based on a large Q and little else.
In a fiendishly clever move, design consultants Citigate Lloyd Northover married old and new by retaining the coat of arms as a watermark on university stationery. (At a reputed fee of £250,000 sterling, Quidnunc would expect such ingenuity.) So, by holding a sheet of new writing paper before a strong light, a shadowy image of the coat of arms, crown and all, can be seen.
Chris Patten, some say, should have thought of this first and suggested a new police badge based on a credit cardtype holograph. Looked at sideways, or in a certain light, it could reveal the crown and harp and even the old name, while, to all obvious appearances, it would be something else entirely. It has been remarked that such a devious solution would have been in keeping with the spirit of the Belfast Agreement.
Queen's, however, has called an abrupt halt to all printing of the new stationery. The designers were given the tricky brief of producing a logo that represented the university's core values and a strong sense of tradition along with a progressive commitment to quality. It also had to be versatile and work well in both traditional and electronic media. With this in mind, their next move was to put all type - addresses, phone numbers, and so on - in a light-brown colour based on the red brick of the Lanyon building.
Problem is a photocopy of such a page results in an entirely blank sheet, apart from a rather enigmatic capital Q. Quidnunc could take it off their hands.