I found this little gem (above) on a recent trip to the U-M Bentley Historical Library. While I’m sure it’s faded a bit over the years it is a wonderful find. Many thanks to Brian Williams of the UMBL for showing this to me!
U-M does publish an official color palette these days, I believe the latest can be found here for those curious. Comment:
“Two colors are at the very core of our existence. Maize and blue play a vital role in establishing a clear and powerful image and in defining the University of Michigan brand.”
In case it moves, here’s a snapshot of the office hex key and pantones:
History
Looking for the origins of the U-M colors? According to ‘The Michigan Book‘, a history of U-M published in 1898:
Our college colors were chosen at a meeting of the literary department held in the chapel on February 12, 1867, when Milton Jackson, ’67, Albert H. Pattengill, ’68, and J. Eugene Jackson, ’69, the committee appointed for the purpose, reported a resolution in favor of “azure-blue and maize”, which was adopted. In about ten years the colors came to be styled, as they are now styled, yellow and blue. The original blue was neither light nor very dark, and the yellow was decidedly golden. Never has there been any warrant for the sickly yellow and the faded blue furnished by some of the tradesmen of Detroit and Ann Arbor.
In these early days, the hue color varied, but original blue commonly looked like this in these vintage Athletic Association buttons:
As the Bentley Historical Library pointed out in this article, back in the day there was a problem. People couldn’t settle on the proper tone of “azure blue and maize.”
The committee gave no examples and no standards on the exact shade and hue. Variations appeared immediately, eventually resulting in multiple versions of the school banner on display in store windows throughout Ann Arbor.
So a committee was formed in 1912 (by no coincidence, the same time the color swatch above apparently was created).
The committee agreed with the athletic clubs that a darker blue—“lapis lazuli, Persian blue, cobalt blue, the clear blue color of the unclouded sky”—was more appropriate than the baby blue that had become the norm. Maize was simply defined as the color of corn, but the committee emphasized the pale lemon yellow “should be avoided.”
In hopes of ending color drift, the committee chose maize and blue ribbons (presumably the same swatches posted in the lead photo to this post) to be the exemplars for all official University of Michigan colors from then on. The ribbons now reside in the Bentley Historical Library’s archive.
