The Logo of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno was originally developed by John Louie in 1994, in response to a contest conducted among Lab staff and students. The yellow spot shows the location of Reno in the blue state of Nevada. UNR's school colors are Silver and Blue.

Dr. James Brune, the director of the Lab, asked that a seismogram be included. Dr. Ken Smith provided the recording of the June 29, 1992 Little Skull Mountain earthquake at NSL's Deep Springs digital station. This record is the vertical component, and it has not been filtered. The Magnitude 5.5 Little Skull Mountain earthquake was triggered by the great Magnitude 7.5 Landers earthquake the previous day, despite being more than 250 km from Little Skull Mountain. The Little Skull Mountain earthquake, which was centered about 100 km northwest of Las Vegas, is the largest recorded earthquake in southern Nevada.

The coda of the seismogram becomes binary dots and dashes, to represent NSL's commitment to high-quality digital seismogram recording. Graduate student Gordon Shields suggested this graphical device.

In 1999 John Louie changed the logo to better reflect the Lab's mission as a Nevada-wide research and service institute.