About Our LogoAbout Our LogoIf your browser supports VRML you can have a look at a VRML version (504K) of our logo.
The VIS logo shows a tube following a closed curve in three-dimensional space. This curve runs along the edges of an octahedron, such that every edge is visited exactly once and the curve does not intersect itself. In fact this construction is possible for none of the regular polyhedra except the octahedron as only in the case of the octahedron an even number of edges meet in one vertex (tetrahedron: 3 edges per vertex, hexahedron: 3, octahedron: 4, dodecahedron: 3, icosahedron: 5).
However, there are several possibilities to define this curve for the regular octahedron. Taking into account symmetry transformations of the regular octahedron only two different variants remain. (I.e. two curves which cannot be mapped onto each other with an symmetry transformation of the regular octahedron.) For the VIS logo the less symmetric curve was choosen which shows the letters V, I, and S: The I is a single, gray edge, the V is a angle out of two edges and the S consists of three edges.
The choice of colors for our logo was extremely controversial and there is still disagreement about the "best" coloring in our group. Therefore, several versions with different colors are circulating. There is also a more aggressive variant for special occasions.
