Our Logo
At Building Knowledge, we believe knowledge is universal - not the domain of any one people, or culture, or group. We therefore chose a symbol that reflects this belief as the inspiration and core of our logo.
This symbol, called the “nea onnim”, comes from the Akan people of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, in west Africa. Traditional Akan culture teaches that the search for knowledge is a life-long process – something we at Building Knowledge also believe strongly and the ethos which underpins our work.
The Akan use a system of ideographic symbols, each one expressing a specific proverb or saying – a very different system from the Western tradition of written alphabets or even Chinese pictographic symbols.
The literal translation of the nea onnim is “He who does not know can become knowledgeable from learning; He who thinks he knows and ceases to continue to learn will stagnate”. (Source: http://www.marshall.edu/akanart/akanknow.html)
The Building Knowledge logo represents learning and knowledge (the nea onnim) linking imagination (represented by gold, a tradional colour of imagination in western European symbology) with physical reality and wisdom (represented by stone-grey);