Logoland

This logo caught my fancy in my local supermarket car park the other day. There is something neat about the subliminal conflict between the net and the hook.

It's good to see a decent logo nowadays. Most of them are either jadedly obvious or the product of some snappy PR idiot.

Take for example the thing that portrays the relatively new Government Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on which I have commented previously.

Nuff said.

EUbike

Now that the Irish EU Presidency is coming to an end, it is time to lift the veil on one of its most potent instruments of success, the EUbike.

You may have thought, in your innocence, that the Presidency logo was simply a pretty celtic picture for putting on notepaper and thick reports.

Not a bit of it. The "logo" was actually derived from the design of the Irish Presidential EUbike. This EU bike has many uses.

It is used for training chairpersons for the inevitable bumpy ride they will get at the negotiating table.

It is invaluable during the pre-Presidency tour of capitals, where the Taoiseach and other ministers ride from the airport into town, enabling them to identify with the people and at the same time draw attention to the then forthcoming Irish presidency.

Turned upside down (no, not that again) it can be used for winding wool for Aran sweaters which are expected to sell out, or dare I say it, be given away to unsuspecting foreign dignitaries, during the Presidency. Any leftovers can be disposed of under cover of The Gathering.

We really have a lot to thank Bertie for. It was his denigration of the undemocratic peann luaidhe that made us appreciate all the more our inheritance from our Victorian forebears. This comprised, in general, objects which were fixable rather than disposable and which relied on crude manpower (main d'oevre) rather than all this newfangled labour saving petrol/electricity driven stuff. It also turned out that this inheritance was eco-friendly and far healthier.

So thank you Bertie for the motivation.

As far as the technical design is concerned, the celtic pattern concept was originally intoduced into the 1996 Irish Presidency logo by Ruairi Quinn, at the beginning of the Celtic Tiger, and, while not quite as bumpy as the present logo, it still had its rise and fall. But that was then and this is now and things have got a lot bumpier along the way.

ASPER

There are always new Government Departments coming on stream these days. This is the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It has been split off from the original Department of Finance for a variety of practical, political and personal reasons which it is not necessary to go into here.

My immediate interest here is the logo. Clearly a new logo was required. In recent times, Government Departments and some State bodies have tried to use variations on the harp. I suppose you could say that this retains a sense of consistency across Government but there are clearly limits to the number of variations you can come up with before the thing becomes unrecognisable. Or should I just say limits to the imagination.

Anyway that unstable looking thing above is, I assume, a variation on the harp, though Brian Boru might not quite know what to do with it should he encounter it on a dark night.

That thought provoked me into wondering what else it might be if it was let out on its own, and my thoughts are below. Additional thoughts are welcome. My imagination is limited, or my mind boggled, or I'm just too plain tired to carry on any further.


Before I leave you, I should explain that the new Department likes to be popularly (if that is the appropriate adverb) known as PER and its blog is As PER and ASPER in Latin is rough or harsh, so I'll leave you to mull over that one.

ReactionsA former colleague with a deep understanding of the national psyche and of the present cataclysm suggests:

Two redundant motorway junctions plus ten intermediate entrances to ghost estates.

Star Quality

I have been trying to figure out what the current Fine Gael logo is supposed to represent.

I suppose the "green flag" is obvious from the green, white and orange.

But the blue, and so much of it, from the party of the Blueshirts? Either somebody slipped up there or the party has identified a latent fascist streak in the Irish electorate.

And do I detect a touch of Papal yellow in there? With all the electoral brouhaha out there you may have forgotten that Ireland hosts the Eucharistic Congress next year.

And the shape of it.

Possibly intended to convey star quality, but it reminds me more of Tinkerbell (from Peter Pan) sprinkling her stardust.

Maybe we need some of that dust to sprinkle over the "bailout" deal, though I would prefer the application of a few Ninja stars there myself.

Logoland

I am often told that I write in too compressed a style and that I assume my readers can read my mind. "Spell it out" I'm told. "Take the reader through all the stages of the argument." "Don't presume knowledge on the reader's part."

Well, that's all fine, but when we enter the world of logos the opposite logic applies. Logos distill the essence and deliver the message in mutely shrill tones. I "love" this or that, or here or there, where the "love" is simply denoted by a red heart.

But what if it's a cat? What the hell is the above poster trying to tell us?

"I scratched my cat's face off so she couldn't nick my Whiskas?"

Give us a break!