Pieter de Vries came to us with one lamp and asked for a logo. We spent a week drawing symbols: a light, a sun, a letter in a circle. None of them was as good as the thing sitting on the table.
So we drew the lamp.
One line, no shading
The drawing is a single line: the dome of the shade, the taper of the base, nothing else. It is simple enough to print at a few millimetres on a bulb carton and bold enough to fill the side of a box.
- On the box it is large, in cream on butter yellow, and the box needs nothing else.
- On the swing tag it sits above the name.
- On the booklet it opens the first page, so the instructions start with the lamp itself.
When it works
Drawing the product only works when the product has a shape people recognise. A lamp with a mushroom shade does. A jar of face cream usually does not.
When it does work, the logo and the product reinforce each other. Every time someone sees the drawing, they picture the lamp, and every time they see the lamp, they remember the drawing.
The lamp drew its own logo. We just held the pen.
