Warning: The following are graphic depictions of logos that may offend

A dozen years ago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego decided to do a makeover of its graphic identity. Amid the MOCAs and MCAs sprouting around the nation, the need for San Diego to distinguish itself was clear. The wisdom of letting a staff member go to pay for the new logo was not so clear, but quality graphic design is obviously crucial to an art museum. Many months and many tens of thousands of dollars later, the logo was unveiled, its cleverly nested clump of letters looking very much like COMA.

The San Diego museum underwent another graphic overhaul more recently, and it didn’t make the same mistake twice. Now, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has gotten in on the act. Maybe the current popularity of television makeover shows prompted the decision, or maybe it was a long-aborning capital campaign for a planned expansion and renovation of the museum’s campus. Either way, it’s hard to remember whether LACMA even had a graphic identity last month. Now, it does.

Sort of. Graphic identity needs to be striking, and this one certainly is. It also needs to be visually explicit, creating personality rather than puzzlement.

The puzzling LACMA logo was unveiled on the cover of the current members’ calendar (it’s on the museum’s website too), and it looks disconcertingly like a baby pacifier. Created in-house, the design consists of a fat letter C with a sideways keyhole shape fitted into the opening. The shape also looks like an iconic silhouette of a head and shoulders, similarly tipped on its side.

The cover of the museum calendar describes the design’s intended meaning through a drawing rendered like a chalk demonstration on a bright orange-colored chalkboard, as if a lesson was being taught in a hip classroom. (LACMA has been on an education binge lately, acting more like a public school than an art museum.) The C, it is explained, stands for “city, county, culture, creativity, connection” -- whew! -- while the keyhole-head is labeled “people.” LACMA’s new mark joins them in a kind of lateral headlock.

Beneath the new graphic mark on the back of the calendar is the new museum slogan -- “Experience the world through art” -- dutifully accompanied by a small (TM). Certainly that idea is novel, and now LACMA owns it. An art museum used to be a worldly place to experience art, but apparently those terms have today been reversed. The big question is whether that reversal is better than being in a COMA.