Logotypes
The keystone of a company’s brand identity is its logotype. A well designed logo is fundamental. It is no exaggeration to say that it strives to convey everything that the company wishes to say about itself in a simple, graphic device.
Ben designed his first logo in 1990 when he was 23 years old. The commission was for the Hambleton Decorative & Fine Arts Society in North Yorkshire.
Ben says:
For many years my mother was a member of NADFAS, the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (now known as The Arts Society) – I think she still is. It wasn’t lost on me at the time that this is why I got the commission. I say commission, I’m not sure I was paid anything for it – the honour of having my design selected, was supposed to be payment enough. The design was a somewhat primitive outline of a white horse positioned on a plain, coloured background. It was very loosely based upon the White Horse of Kilburn, a well-known local landmark. It featured on the cover of the small folded card that listed the programme of events which was sent out annually to all society members. Each year the Society freshened up the design by changing the background colour and this ran for many years, (probably until they ran out of colours). I was never very happy with it, indeed would be far too ashamed of my manifest amateurism to reproduce it here. But if nothing else, this tiny commission kindled an interest in graphic design. The interaction between images and text, not merely what they say in purely semantic terms, but how they can be combined to convey personality and meaning way beyond their literal reading, has always fascinated me.
More than thirty years on… Ben still enjoys designing logos and helping companies create a brand identity which expresses the values they wish to communicate, simply and effectively. Although his white horse logo is no longer in service, it is gratifying to see that its spirit lives on in the banner which forms the header to the ‘Arts Society Hambleton’ website and that it remains very much part of the Society’s identity today. You can view this here: Arts Society, Hambleton
Herewith a selection of logotypes designed over the years by Ben Galloway for Brand Inventions…
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