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A couple of years ago, we heard from Donal McLaughlin ’33BArch, who happened to mention in the course of an unrelated conversation that he had designed the United Nations logo while working for the OSS in World War II. It sounded like a story to us, so we asked graphic designer (and design blogger) Michael Bierut to help McLaughlin tell how his brush with history came about. (Read the article here.)

McLaughlin, who died on Sunday at 102, had a long and fruitful career as an architect. But the UN emblem, designed on the fly as a lapel pin (left) for the delegates at the first United Nations Conference in 1945, was his claim to fame. As he told Bierut with a laugh: “I dreamed once of seeing my designs in brick and stone. And instead, the thing I’m best known for is a button.”