We like logos … making them, looking at them, playing with them and taking them on long walks on sunny afternoons in the park. Please don’t laugh, it’s unkind.
The process of visually exploring a symbol for someone or something presents so much potential. The road is clear, the sky is blue and the options are numerous. Creativity abounds, imagination runs wild and our electrons and neurons bounce round and round in an ever state-changing free-for-all that would make quantum theorists around the world proud.
But whether she was chosen out of reason or emotion, no matter the logic or rhyme, it is often hard to look back and remember how she became ‘the one.’
And then, the dreaded day comes, the selection process. One by one, the mark is flecked, the seal is splotched, the stamp is smeared, the emblem is blotched. One by one specked, stained and smudged until the one — that one — stands out.
Is it? Could it be? Tweaked, twisted, turned … then oh la la, she’s “the one”. Yes, that one. She is carted off with excitement and anticipation, only to catch one last glimpse of her brothers and sisters looking at her with a sideways smile as they fade into the distance.
The polish and prep work begins immediately and “the one” goes on to the great famed halls of logo-dom. Unless she is later refused. Never to return, she goes off in isolation, living a quite life of solitude and regret.
But whether she was chosen out of reason or emotion, no matter the logic or rhyme, it is often hard to look back and remember how she became “the one.” And while “the one” is out getting famous — on TV, in Times Square, on a package, magazine or simply a respectable cover letter — their brothers and sisters were left behind, but to what end?
We at AREA 17 feel a responsibility to take care of them — the unused and yes, even the black sheep, the refused. To nurture and educate them, helping them understand that it wasn’t personal and they are no less important, even without the famed path of their now dissociate sibling.
This presentation of logos is somewhat of a family reunion of the used with the unused, and the refused. Though stoic in nature, the love between logos is clearly present.
Additionally, we bring them together here as an exercise for us — the observers of logos — to see “frères et soeurs” together, to appreciate the ties of kindred-ship and celebrate their enduring spirits, famed or otherwise.