The UI's old seal combines "Learning and Labor" (UI's motto) by picturing a glowing book, a plow, an anvil, and a steam engine. The words in the book indicate again that culture and the fine arts should be (and perhaps are always already) deeply connected with the labor and industry that keeps all of us alive.
    However, some of the seal's meanings are less obvious. The seal's designers made a point by using English instead of the usual Latin. Laurel-branches and other classical references are absent, as are religious symbols, despite the strong religious beliefs of Jonathan Baldwin Turner and other University founders. The University seal uses working-class imagery instead of the usual classical allusions, and in doing so, proclaims a new model of education, which breaks conspicuously from the Classical ivory-tower elitism of nineteenth century private education, to endorse a new democratic, technological, and public-spirited kind of learning.

(M. Dahlquist)