Child pages
  • Aalto University logo package
Skip to end of metadata
Go to start of metadata

The aaltologo LaTeX package provides commands to draw the Aalto University logo in LaTeX following the visual identity guidelines of Aalto University. The logo can be drawn with a user-defined color and mark or with a random color and a random mark. In addition to the logo drawing commands, the package sets the document fonts to follow the visual identity guidelines of Aalto University, and it defines and names the color set that can be used together with the Aalto University visual identity.

The aaltologo package was created by researchers of the Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics. It has been verified and approved by the Aalto University Marketing and Communications, making it the official LaTeX implementation of the logo.

The aaltologo package has been published under Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative license ( This means that you can use the package freely in your own documents, packages and classes but it also means that you cannot base your own Aalto University logo package upon this package. However, you use this package as an example in designing your own packages implementing the visual identity of a company/university.

Please use this package with all you LaTeX documents requiring the Aalto logo. Furthermore, you can use it with new document templates such as  theses, posters, etc.

The package is distributed through Aalto Git repository and contains the following files and directories:

  • aaltologo.sty - The style file that provides the logo drawing commands and that sets the fonts and defines the Aalto University colors.
  • aaltologo.pdf - The documentation of the package (that is, of the style file).
  • LICENSE.txt - The publication licenses of the package and the documentation.
  • README.txt - A very short description of package contents
  • aaltologo-showcase.pdf - A showcase of the logos that can be drawn using the package.
  • examples/ - A directory that contains the example codes given in the package documentation.

The latest version can be downloaded as a zip file form here

If you encounter problems when using the package, consult first the troubleshooting page before contacting the package maintainers. The maintainers do not want to receive hundreds of emails that complain about the same feature.


  1. Would it be possible to add explicit selector for language to the package or command options instead of relying on the information from the environment? This would alleviate the problems with language selection processing in MikTeX and TeXlive.

    1. Definitely your suggestion would help. However, the idea behind the approach that is currently used is the fact that it does not require any changes to the logo drawing commands (nor to the package inclusion command) by the author when the document language is changed. Since the babel package provides hyphenation and active character support, it is typically used for other languages than English (like Finnish and Swedish), hence providing a practical interface for selecting the logo language.

      Yet, the next version, the one that can draw the logos for the new schools, will have a slightly improved processing of the document language information. With the new processing approach possible babel package loading problems will be removed. (IMPLEMENTED!)


  2. Why does the package do \RequirePackage{newcent} and \RequirePackage[scaled]{helvet}? This changes fonts in the whole TeX-document, which is not nice, and, at least for me, the package works fine without these lines.

    There also seems to be unwanted whitespace, e.g., on line 4379, which can mess up alignment by inserting a space before the logo in the document.

    EDIT: the automatic language selection breaks up on \usepackage[english,finnish]{babel}, which is useful in an English thesis that also includes a Finnish abstract.


      The package changes the fonts because they are required to. As in Section 4 of the documentation is stated: "the aaltologo package redefines the document fonts to fulfill the visual identity guidelines of Aalto University". In other words, the Aalto University logo can be used only with fonts that are matched. Therefore, the package needs to change the default fonts.


      Thanks for noticing this. This will be updated to the next version of the package


      Now I dont' follow. By including the babel package with those options in that given order, the document language is set to Finnish (remember, the last option sets the document language). This means that all automatic texts (like the header of Table of Contents) is in Finnish and the language of the logos is Finnish too by default.

      If you want to have logo that is in English (or Finnish, if you change the order of the options you give to the babel package), you need to change the language with the \selectlanguage command (see Section 1 for further details). For example, if the document language is Finnish and you want to have a logo in English, you need to type:

      \AaltoLogoRandomLarge{1} % or another logo drawing command

      Remember that you need to give all languages you are about to use as options to the babel package in order to be able to use them.


      1. Sorry for not reading the manual and being unspecific. Apparently, the problem was that my Babel installation included Finnish and English languages, but not Swedish. This results to the following error (on e.g. latex sample4.tex):

        ! Package babel Error: You haven't defined the language swedish yet.

        which I found quite weird, because I was only trying to use [english,finnish].

        1. It appears that your LaTeX distribution has an old version of the babel package. I recommend that you update or you ask your system administrator to update the LaTeX distribution to the latest one. By updating the distribution to the latest version many version-dependency issues can be avoided.


          1. Actually I have the latest versions of Babel and TeX Live, but I was missing the Swedish language pack, i.e., the Debian package texlive-lang-swedish. My point is that problems appear if all three languages are not enabled/installed, which they may not be by default. This might also concern MiKTeX.

      2. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the guidelines for Aalto's visual identity do not specify that if the university's logo is used in the document, then the whole document must be typeset in using Nimbus Sans and Sentinel (or equivalents). Even setting aside the fact that there does not appear to be official substitutes to be used in LaTeX documents to replace the official fonts, it does not make sense that placing the University's logo on, e.g., the cover page of a thesis would ”taint” the whole document to be written using the official fonts.

        Would it be possible to include a package option that the fonts of the document will not be changed, perhaps so that the use of the said option produces a notification/warning that the user should manually ensure that the document fulfills the requirements of the visual guidelines?


        1. No, the guidelines do not explicitly state that, but according to the discussions I have had with Aalto Communications, they would like to see all Aalto publications (including theses) to use the official Aalto fonts. Imagine a situation where every publication has a different set of fonts in use. How would that build a united identity?

          Since the very official fonts (Nimbus Sans and Sentinel) or the official replacement fonts (Arial and Georgia) are not available in LaTeX, as mentioned in the aaltologo package documentation, we asked Communications to select fonts that are available and that are as close as possible to the official fonts. Hence, the aaltologo sets the fonts to be New Century Schoolbook and Helvetica, which are now official Aalto-LaTeX fonts.

          No, the aaltologo package will not have an option to switch off the font substitution. If you still don't like the official Aalto-LaTeX fonts, I, or Aalto Communications, cannot prevent you from changing them to ones you like more. But I won't give you any hints how to do that, hopefully you understand.


          1. "Since the very official fonts (Nimbus Sans and Sentinel) or the official replacement fonts (Arial and Georgia) are not available in LaTeX"

            This is matter of engine used. There are many modern options that support TrueType and OpenType fonts installed on the system out of the box (so Arial and Helvetica on all machines, and official fonts after asking servicedesk to install them).

            There's no reason to use these substitute fonts if the final target is PDF, not PS.

  3. The package writes the old name of School of Arts, Design and Architecture, i.e. School of Art and Design.

    1. That's right. There are also old Aalto colors, since those have been tuned a bit. I quess no one has been updating the aaltologo/series for many years now. (They are looking for a kind person for doing this...)

  4. I put the files and logopack in github for a fast to get started project. Let me know what you think. It can be found here.


  5. The School of Economics has long been renamed to School of Business, but in this package, the old name remains. I am an intermediate user of LaTeX, but I don't have the expertise to change this in the package. Can anyone provide any help with this?

  6. A long issue with the current font settings!

    The main body font  (roman/serif) of Aaltologo and Aaltoseries is New Century Schoolbook. There are few issues with this font as follows.

    1- It is not the font recommended by Aalto design guideline (Sentinel) as discussed above. Not only these two fonts are from two very different categories (serif vs slab-serif), they are not even graphically compatible. Century Schoolbook is a heavier font with wider spacing, which might be good for school books, but not for publications. The heavy weight makes the passages look dark and messy compared to modern fonts with standard spacing, and it is not well suited for small sizes.

    2- Most dissertations in our university are full of mathematical symbols and equations. For a math-heavy text, it is necessary to have a matching (same) fonts for body text and math equations. In contrast, the current math font is Computer Modern, which is neither matching nor graphically compatible with Century Schoolbook.

    3- New Century Schoolbook is not matching with Helvetica used as sans-serif font, although Helvetia is not the first recommendation by Aalto design guidelines. Century Schoolbook is much heavier and widely-spaced compared to Helvetica.

    4- The choice of monospace (typewriter) font TXTT also seems arbitrary and not matching with Century Schoolbook. The monospace font is widely in some disciplines to list source code or algorithms. Moreover, TXTT is not designed for printing but only for screen display. There are very few monospace fonts designed to look good at print.

    I have two solutions

    1- Select a lighter font for body text, which will be graphically more compatible with Sentinel, making sure that there is an existing math package for that font. Two obvious options are Computer Modern and Times. With matching text and math the document will look a way better. And a lighter font will allow for better spacing and improved layout. A matching sans-serif font can be found for standard fonts. Helvetica is a very good match for Times variants. A matching typewriter font package can be also found. For example, Beramono is matching well with Times/Helvetica. This setup can be compiled using pdfLatex or old-school ps process.

    2- The current selection of fonts are justified by the fact that LaTeX do not support the fonts recommended by Aalto design guidelines. However, this is an old myth! As already mentioned in above discussions, new TeX engines, like XeLaTeX, combined with the fontspec package support any available system font (TTF and OTF). XeLaTeX is bundled with all current TeX distributions. It is already installed and working on all Aalto workstations. So, one can simply design a new version of Aaltologo and Aaltoseries packages for XeLaTeX/fontspec. It can use Sentinel (serif) and Nimbus Sans (sans-serif) fonts to be fully compatible with Aalto Visual Identity. However, finding math symbols to match Sentinel is not trivial. There is no existing package and Sentinel does not have a good coverage of math symbols. But, we can check existing math fonts and choose one that is closest to the Sentinel. For the monospace font, something like Inconsolata can be used, which prints very nice even at large sizes. I am inclined towards using XeLaTeX, and can provide help to develop packages.

  7. I will not go into the text font issue as that is a can of worms (transitioning from LaTeX to XeLaTeX is not trivial if your existing documents use non-trivial stuff; I tried). But the ugly math problem is a reality and has an existing solution: use the fouriernc package. In Ubuntu this is in texlive-fonts-extra.

    I could add this to the aaltologo code if nobody objects. It is, in fact, a bug fix and I cannot imagine anyone being dependent upon CM math.


    1. Hi Martin,

      Thanks for reply. Yes, body font is not an easy thing to change. But we do have Aalto design guidelines, and there is nothing beautiful about Century Schoolbook! In fact, Times is much more similar to Sentinel in terms of weight and space than Century Schoolbook. 

      Moving to XeLaTeX is not difficult for Aaltoseries that is an empty template to start writing with. The existing example of disseratation compiles with XeLaTeX without any change. Ideally, aaltoseries should include math packages and sets of macros and guidelines to typeset math, graphics, tables, etc. Since such things are not provided yet, switching to XeLaTeX should not be very difficult. We can also prepare a more complete dissertation template with documentation and links for replacement packages, e.g., unicode-math and polyglossia. At the end, move to XeLaTeX does not need to discontinue existing pdflatex support. It can be an option for people who want to use it and follow Aalto visual identity.

      I did not try to see how fouriernc matches with Century Schoolbook. But newtxmath is a better math package for Times and similar fonts. You may compare them to see which one is more compatible in terms of stroke width, shape, and spacing.



      1. Hi Hassan,

        I just talked with Martti Rahkila about this, and the best solution would probably be to create a XeLaTeX branch in the aaltoseries project using Sentinel and Nimbus sans. The dissertation template is now in the repository (I added some math examples) so feel free to add further examples and send them to me.

        I already yesterday added an option for using fouriernc to aaltoseries.


        1. Hi Martin,

          Great. We can put XeLaTeX branch in the repo and work on it to get finalized. I will send you a working version soon. There are two main work areas:

          • Replacing babel with polyglossia. babel is extensively used in the templates.
          • Setting math font/typeset. It is possible to use Sentinel for math, but the typeset is not elegant. On the other hand Times (newtxmath) has elegant typeset for math but does not match well with Sentinel. I am looking for a middle ground now.

          Regarding the pdflatex version, I will check your uploaded version. It is good that you added some math. I will add more math to test. I have also new margin setups. I will send you my version soon.

  8. I think it's worth mentioning that also Aalto CHEM logos are wrong; they are using the old name: "Aalto school of chemical technology" instead of the new one which is "Aalto school of of chemical engineering".

    Just thought it'd be worth noting, as it's already acknowledged somewhere that business and ARTS-logos are oudated but no mention of CHEM.

    1. Actually I updated both the CHEM and the BIZ logos this spring using trickery, it's in the repository. For ARTS it looks impossible for me to do, as the changes needed are well beyond trickery, and I have no idea what tools were used to generate the Tikz code. Good ideas welcome!


  9. Rejoice Aalto artists, designers and architects! There is now an up-to-date logo for the "School of Arts, Design and Architecture" under the new name. Call it as TAIK. Only in English for now, but now that I know how to do it, a Finnish one should be doable too. It involved a bit of reverse engineering and writing a Matlab script for generating and placing individual letters (these are in git). And sweat. And a dirty trick for the comma...

    1. Now also the Finnish version done... except... i don't have any letter 'j' to scavenge. Yelp!

  10. So I manually built a letter 'j'... the TAIKFI logo is now complete, and looks IMHO good.

    TAIKSE is undone, and I won't do it until somebody needs it (smile)