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Logo
UK JAPAN The British Embassy in Japan asked johnson banks to think about a symbol they could use for a series of events celebrating projects carried out jointly between British and Japanese companies. "As we experimented with ways to sum up the UK and Japan in one single symbol, we wondered if we could find a typographic solution to what seemed a very tricky conundrum. We looked to see if we could take the letters for 'UK' and combine them with the kanji for Japan. At first sight, this seemed almost impossible - we could see how it might be possible to combine the first kanji with a 'U', but the other character was much more challenging. By spinning the characters in both languages left and right, we began to make some headway. Luckily, we had managed to find a genuinely bilingual symbol to sum up the collaboration." Designers say so. STUDIO: johnson banks [UK] CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Michael Johnson DESIGNER: Julia Woollams Process
What is the purpose of a logo?
What's your design philosophy in brand design?
Originally, at a very basic level, a logo was a unique way of writing yours or a company's name – a kind of signature and way of making your individual mark on the world. Over the last decade brands are being using more as entire communications toolkits, to the degree now where many companies and organisations are thinking much harder about their brand, and how they use it, than they are about their advertising strategy.
Our design philosophy is to try not to repeat ourselves; to do something memorable and unique, whilst finding something that solves our client's design problem. However, it is more difficult to do than it sounds.