Construction designed
I recently worked with my step-dad on restoring an old crappy apartment into my own cocoony shangri-la during a whole summer. It was a huge job, but one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done: pre-designing the place, sharing some crazy ideas, building walls and re-doing the roof, the floor, and pretty much everything including wiring the whole place for electricity was very interesting and educational.
During all this work, I handled a good amount of construction tools, obviously: hammers, saws, screws and screw-guns, sanders and so-one. My mind wandered looking at these tools’ boxes and designs, until I finally started (instead of working, eventually) noticing these objects’ surrounding visual imagery. I became quite fascinated by the brands’ graphic designs, with names such as Makita, Karscher, Rocket, Milwaukee or Bosch. After considering the strange iteration of the letter K in most of the names, I started taking interest in the colors and typography surrounding these brands’ graphic identities, and therefore, I started analyzing them and noticing similarities between the designs.
First of all, all names are written in caps, and if they’re not, they’re big, big letters, bold to the point of fatness, with kerning reduced to a mere minimum, expressing a sense of strong build (well, obviously) and massive foundation. The idea of mass is, in an obvious manner, always depicted, whether it’s thanks to the heavy letters, or via a stretching-down of the typography: letters are arranged according to a straight line, with little to nothing expanding outside of this strict rectangle mimicking a sturdy foundation, similar to a brick in its shape, material and mass. When this analogy may come as obvious, I believe it is a clever stand nonetheless, and worth noticing: using only letters and their arrangement, these logos convey a sense of long-lasting, strong materials, which is what you’d hope for in building your house with these tools, right?
Now comes the color: when Makita uses a greenish blue (or a blueish green), other brands essentially use hot colors like red, yellow or orange. Of course, it would mean dynamics and action compared to pastel turquoises or else… But apart from that obvious meaning, these colors are also those used for warnings, orders and general danger-related things. These are the colors of « caution » signs, firetrucks and hard-hats, essentially what needs to be seen from a distance and by everyone. So these tools are obviously meant to be handle with caution, but their logos’ colors also imply a sense of safety-oriented manufacturing and a « in your face » type of object. Indeed, bright unapologetic colors can also mean speed and violence, which, for a sledge-hammer, is a good thing.
So what kind of person does this portray? A strong man/woman who isn’t afraid of using dangerous tools, who will work fast with them, who can build anything sturdy and solid. One might argue that these types of logos are essentially thought to attract men: a certain vision of virility in the idea of something strong, straight-to-the-point and efficient. I guess construction tools for women should be pastel and delicate, with logos written in arabesques? Not in the slightest, because these tools’ logos are not made to attract, but to sell, and what anyone, woman or man, wants when he/she builds his/her house, is a reliable tool that will do the work it’s asked to do. It’s not a matter of luring someone in and using deception to swoon the hypothetical buyer, but more about showing off in the most obvious way possible.
