Sunday 29 July 2018

Logo love



Just a quick post to say how enthralled I am by the new logo/branding concept for the famous Battersea Dogs' Home, now known as just 'Battersea' - that's how familiar it is to us here in the UK, we don't even need to mention the dogs (or cats).

I love it.  It's so simple.

I adore the fact that a loose watercolour splodge in a totally unrealistic colour, with some basic lines, roughly drawn but at just the right angles, can signify something so utterly, perfectly recognisable. As an illustrator I find it easy to get hung up on the vital step between keeping something looking relatively realistic and reducing it to something that's only implied.  It's hard. The simpler something looks, the more difficult it may have been to actually get to successfully.  Often I think the best results are those we draw without inhibition, when we're instinctive and have tapped into another part of our brains, which is tricky when bogged down with all the trappings of convention and expectation and pressure.  Sorry, that's a bit wordy, and probably for much the same reason.  Anyway, yes, what I'm trying to say is that a kind of primal rendering often yields the most striking results.

And in this way, a bluey-purple blob, with a couple of uneven triangular lines and and a flat black oval in the middle is able to represent, so successfully, a particular breed of dog, and an expressive one at that, even though it has no expression....    Our brains and our imaginations will fill in the blanks, but they have to be given just the right directions first.

I reckon the creators of Battersea's new brand have got it absolutely spot on and I can't stop looking at their brilliant blobs.  Have a look here to see the full set of pussycats and pooches, created by illustrator Hiromi Suzuki.



13 comments:

  1. I like it.

    Going (ever so slightly) off topic - have you seen how Trump's signature looks like a KKK rally?

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    1. Scarily so. Even without that, it looks kind of pointy and angry as if written by an arrogant man with a massive ego and tiny hands. Ah...

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  2. Think I recognise one of the cats.

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    1. :-)
      Actually one of them also looks like not unlike the one that shat in our vegetable trough this morning. Almost all over the courgettes! Grrr....

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  3. "Here for every dog and cat" is a great tag line.

    Re Trump - I just finished a book called "Nixonland" which shows where Trump and his chums stole all their ideas from the campaigns to elect and re-elect Richard Nixon in the late 1960's/early 1970's. It's a stunning, meticulously researched read which details how Nixon deliberately divided an entire nation so he could take power. And he loathed the public.

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    1. Yes - great tag line as well as pics. Simple and not over-emotive.

      The book sounds really interesting, thanks FBCB. But will Trump have the same fate as Nixon, or has it somehow got past that now? He seems to be like Teflon with all the scandals and everything that one would imagine should have brought him down by now.
      Talking of the T-word - just watched the first part of the Ed Balls In Trumpland series. Really enjoyed it.

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  4. They are great - Reminded me that DD had a little book with an ink stamp when she was young, where you adapted an inky thumbprint onto all sorts. Not as good as these granted.

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    1. I think I know the book you mean (or similar). Thumbprints that can be turned into robins, trees, bears, etc. Lovely stuff.

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  5. Thought you might think the same about this, Yve!

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  6. Stunning in all its simplicity.

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