The Swandro-Orkney Coastal Archaeology Trust are pleased to announce, after much deliberation, soul searching, squinting at the computer screen & fraught emails … we have a logo!!!!!
Who would’ve thought it – that makes us official, it’s a bit like having an ‘ology’ if you’ve got a logo. Everyone’s got a logo now – I blame computer graphics & photoshop myself - I’m old enough to remember the days when it was innovative for tradesmen to have their names on the sides of their vans let alone a logo, now even the milkman has one. Mind you I’m also old enough (just!) to remember the last milkman round our way who delivered with a horse & cart – fairly sure the horse didn’t have a trade name spray painted down his sides, although come to think of it spray paint probably hadn’t been invented then either.
Anyway I digress, we have a logo (and before I get howls of complaint about wasting the Trust’s hard earned cash on fripperies, let me add that the logo has been sponsored by a local business (Orkney Archaeology Tours) & so hasn’t cost us a penny). I thought the design process would be easy – I knew more-or-less what I wanted –the Great Wave of Kanagawa ...
... descending on the Knowe of Swandro and trying to sweep it into the sea. This is not hard to imagine – given how close to the shore the site is, we live in daily fear of more of it heading for the Atlantic:
Did some very basic (photoshop!!) mock ups which I thought looked fine with the fonts I’d used, thought of some colours that’d do very nicely, and toddled off to visit the graphic designer, who was pleased that I had at least some idea of what I wanted – apparently most people don’t & he spends a lot of time trying to read minds. Anyway in short order he’d emailed me a half a dozen different versions, all of which I thought were very fine, just what I wanted with the colours & fonts I’d chosen, including one I particularly liked.
At this point I thought I’d better run the designs past they-who-must-be-obeyed aka Steve & Julie the dig directors for a quick approval. (Now you may think I should’ve done this at the start & you’re probably right but hey-ho, you live & learn). Turned out I am quite behind the times in socially acceptable font styles, font sizes & word spacing, and I have no sense of style or any idea of colour co-ordination & quite probably shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near any design project in the future.
On reflection mea culpa, it’s all true – have never been able to see what colours go with what, hence I only ever wear black with occasional forays into an Orkney sweater or a Scotland rugby shirt for special occasions (Scotland now ranked no. 5 in the world after satisfactorily thrashing Ireland & Wales in the Six Nations by the way - the last one a bit of a sore point in our household at the moment since my man is half Welsh – tee hee!). Anyway I digress, but the upshot of this is it was back to the designer for another 20 versions of the idea with lots of colour variations, fonts, spacings etc. before the final version was agreed upon & launched on an unsuspecting public. Hope you all like it!
On a different note, although our logo was sponsored, we are still very much in need of funds for our 2017 dig season in July, so if any of you wonderful people having read this far would see your way clear to maybe clicking the donation button below and making a small contribution to the dig fund that would be gratefully received - thank you!