Jardin de Cactus
The artist’s art
Created in 1991 as the last project of a Spanish artist César Manrique, Jardin de Cactus is a cactus garden on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, where the artist was born. The garden has 4,500 examples of 450 species of 13 different families of cactus from around the world.
Designed by a Warsaw, Poland based Owlsome studio, and Sheffield, UK based designer Harry Wright.
The logo mark is inspired by one of César Manrique’s depictions of a cactus. His drawing really brings out the basic features of the plant without complicating it, clearly shows a cactus but in its most simplest form. By using the artist’s exact drawing as an inspiration for the logo mark we wanted to bring the real heritage and identity of the artist, instead of our own depiction of it.
Manrique sans is a custom typeface we designed inspired by the artists rough blocky drawings as well as the sharp depictions of the cactus plant.
Thoughts
Even without the fact that I personally love cactus, I looooove this identity. It’s not just because the quirky cactus stole my heart but everything came from the artist’s work. The story behind the logo — a cactus drawing of the artist— is a perfect scenario for the identity work. And the custom typeface, also inspired by the artist’s work, is truly unique and gives consistent tone of voice through the applications. The colors which reminds the dry and hot feel of the island are based on his artworks too.
Maybe I can’t stop saying how I love this identity but if I have to say in short, I would say ‘this is “the” identity work’.
More on Behance project page
