Back to the future: Design for Planet’s new/old look
Two years on since announcing our mission to Design for Planet, a call to designers to make mother nature their key stakeholder, we have created a new logo (that is actually quite an old logo).
The recent process to refresh the Design Council’s core branding took us on a journey of discovery into what climate conscious graphics should consider and so we wanted to put our best design foot forward for our planet centric message.
The previous design was a striking neon yellow/green that, we now know, requires more energy to render digitally than less saturated colours and it couldn’t be colour matched for eco-friendly printing. The application of the strong colour also proved difficult in practice as legibility was low for visually impaired audiences.
To take on the challenge, we sought the help of experienced brand consultant, Bill Wallsgrove:
“I felt it needed a much more branded approach. It was required to be an ingredient brand for use across media and in collaboration with third parties.
By good fortune I am a visiting lecturer at the University of Brighton where the Design Council Archives are held. I like to start any project with detailed research on the origins of any identity, so I took a deep dive into this fascinating historical treasure trove located at the University’s Grand Parade Campus.
I came across a copy of Design magazine (from the Council for Industrial Design — Issue No. 82) from 1955 which had a cover and central feature announcing the new symbol for the forthcoming Design Centre in Haymarket.
The eye and arrow symbol was created by Hans Schleger to celebrate the very best of British design. The magazine included a fascinating interview with Hans describing his thinking behind the design and displaying his creative process.
Hans is a fascinating character in British design history who was to be honoured with the title Royal Designer for Industry. He was a freelance designer and illustrator who worked under the pseudonym Zéró. In 1932 he moved to England, from New York, where he worked for the advertising firm Mather & Crawford before setting up his own practice in 1953. He became an integral part of London’s early 1930s avant garde design community and helped spread the aesthetics and philosophy of modernism in Britain.
I presented an idea to recycle the classic design which was very well received by the Design Council team — very on Design for Planet brand!”
The Design Council designers went on to work on fine tuning the archival logo to modernise and soften it.
Niall O’Connor, Designer at the Design Council explains, “The semiotics of Schlger’s logo cried Design for Planet to us in three ways:
- The Arrow. Movement, progress, momentum. All things that the design sector needs to turn climate aims into reality.
- The Eye. Humanity, inspection, reflection. It represents that design is a human process. The progress we desire can only be made through people understanding, reflecting, and creating an intervention.
- The Pupil. The centre of our logo shows focus on the matter at hand and an Earth shaped circle highlights this direction of attention perfectly.
We wanted to retain the confidence and purity of the original design, but some subtle changes were needed to remove it from its mid-century contexts and create a piece we hope will be more evergreen.
We slightly rounded the corners on each point of the arrow, around the edges of the eye and added three slightly curved edges to the left of the logo to create an overall softer impression. This concept was inspired by British designer, James Barnard who describes the straight lines to curves as ‘squirckles’.
For the centre of the eye, we have chosen P-139–7 C Green which is printable in CMYK gamut to avoid printing with extra shots of white, or additive/fluorescent inks. Digitally there is huge scope to play with what we show in that cental space, be it snapshots from nature or brilliant examples of designs that are helping planet earth.”
Our new logo reveal marks the countdown to Design for Planet Festival 2023 which will be taking place at the University of East Anglia this 17–18 October.
