The new mark embraces the antique nature of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, both in the age of the original museums that merged to create this museum and the age of the collection’s content. The leaf references the Museum’s star exhibit: the Glass Flowers. The glass flowers are an extremely detailed collection of glass models of exotic plants made by a father and son team of glass artists that started in 1886 and continued for fifty years. This collection brings in a majority of the tourist visitors. This international perspective is what led to the selection of simple and worldwide representation of a leaf. The leaf is also representation of one of the world’s simplest forms of life: the sprout. The leaf also points to the left in the direction of the past. The leaf grows from the right stem of the capital H and acts as the crossbar of the letterform, overlapping the left stem. The H itself references the greater identity of Harvard.