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I will have to agree with those who think that trying to come up with a symbol to represent Objectivism is an idle pursuit. However, if anyone wants to carry on with this idea, there are some aspects that should be firstly considered. In order to be functional, a symbol requires simplicity. It has to be easily readable and reproducible. The black and yellow image above has too many elements in it. Some of them are still incomprehensible to me, and nobody is going to stand in front of your symbol, staring at it and examining all of its little details. If you want it to be recognizable, the elements included have to be understandable at a quick glance. Otherwise, nobody is going to pay attention to it, and they will probably forget it a few minutes later. Take a look at some of the most well-known symbols, or famous logos from big brands. They all share simplicity. No one uses the Sistine Chapel ceiling as a symbol, when a red cross or a Nike Swoosh does the job. The last image is fine as it is. The other one looks like a ribbon awarded in a competition, or a text bubble from a comic book. Gradients are nice, but they are usually not advisable. Unless you want to invest all your money in full color impressions of a symbol with hundreds of inks, rather than just one or two, using gradients is probably not the best idea. The same applies to photographs. You must take into account its reproduction. There is no room for much detail or color when using certain physical formats, at least without suffering some type of distortion. The symbol should have a good size ratio, so that it can be still easily recognizable when it is reduced in size for smaller applications. I am curious about how far you are planning to take this, but the symbol has to be simple enough to fit in a pencil or in a golf ball. Also, you might like to add the word "Objectivism" to the illustration, so that people can start associating it with the symbol. The drawing by itself is not going to take you very far. You can drop the name when the symbol acquires enough recognition, but it is always necessary to include it at the beginning. Anyway, there is a lot more to take into consideration, but this should be enough for now.

I am happy and worn out to report that I have spent the past 6 weeks reading Kant's Critique of Judgment (for a class which I chose), so that I can finally contribute to discussions such as this. I have another couple of weeks of reading left, and then I will have read the whole book from cover to cover. Aside from this his third critique, I have also read portions of the Critique of Pure Reason (in preparation for the Critique of Judgment). Thoyd Loki is 100% correct. Since I am reading Kant's work in which he discusses aesthetics, take this example. Ayn Rand called Kant the father of modern art; yet I am convinved that Kant would have hated Picasso, Pollock, and everything in between. I would not be all that surprised if he would have had problems even with impressionism. Obviously Ayn Rand did not, when reading Kant, come across some statement of his which approves of non-representational art. Philosophical detection is not so easy. What Ayn Rand DID do, I assume, is to focus on, as the essential, Kant's denial of any objective principle for evaluating beauty. Taken in this light, Kant's claims which might seem to exclude modern art do not matter, culturally. I apologize if my writing has been negatively influenced by too much reading of Kant. EDIT: I did not mean to say that Kant's denial of an objective standard of beauty is the ONLY important clue to Kant's role as father of modern art. It's also crucial to examine, for example, his comments on (artistic) geniuses [e.g., artistic genius is innate] and on interest in art as arising only in society.

Even a primitive government having a single law, for example a law that prohibits murder, imposes a morality on others. Force does impose values, but that is not a power inherent only to those that initiate force but also equally to those who retaliate with force. Those who initiate force attempt to gain a value, those who defend or retaliate are attempting to keep a value. State action is just a subcategory of the genus human action, and all human action is directed towards values. The values protected by the principles of rational government and the particular persons who are its officers, agents and citizens are the inalienable human rights. Within its narrow domain over physical force, the state compels compliance with the proper value system upon all who act contrary to those values. To the extent that tax laws are a necessary means to the end of a government equal to its task the state can compel compliance with tax laws. I have argued and given some evidence that tax laws have historically been necessary to meet the high costs of financing wars. The conclusion is that taxation can be moral and does have a place within the government of a free society.