Re-discovering a muse
I was 5 when I saw Prince on TV for the first time. All I knew was that I hadn’t seen someone like him before. I didn’t grow up to become a fan of his, and it may horrify you to know that… I even turned down tickets for one of his stadium concerts in Paris. It actually horrifies me now. I was twenty something and wasn’t into his sound, but now, with the clairvoyance of my late thirties, I know that a concert is muuuuuuuch more than going some place to listen to music. : )
After having spent these past years fascinated about identity, diversity and a “more is more” spirit that celebrates flamboyance, I guess I developed new filters. This morning, after a very early meeting at 7 am (it was 5pm for my client in Australia who noticed that I needed some coffee in me), I decided to wake my mind up with some inspi-reading. That’s how I stumbled upon an article on The Drum about how Prince’s logo, the Love Symbol was designed. With my brain’s updated criteria, “Prince” had apparently become a name that triggered an “Oh yes, this will be good” kind of reaction in me.
And that’s how I fell into the rabbit hole of The Artist’s life, convictions, battles for autonomy from music labels and so on (Did you know he loved Basketball?).
He gave up on his stage name and decided to co-design a symbol to free himself from Warner Brothers’ limiting contract.
A great reason to design a logo
“Freedom is how you get closer to God“, he says in one of his interviews.
Freedom is the main condition to being able to create. I often do coaching sessions with people working in creative fields and those who forget how to “play” and follow their own appetite, suffer the most. They end up experiencing art as a job that owns them.
A powerful recipe
Lots of brands out there have logos that don’t mean much. They undermine the power of story and emotion. A logo is meant to be the “password” to your world (even when it’s not a word ; ). Our minds connect with that symbol the memory of all our encounters with you. It’s a data base. It’s nano-marketing ! Yes… I get excited.
Prince put so much behind that symbol. The number 7, a spiritual number also present in one of his iconic albums. It brings together the symbols of male-Mars and female-Venus, conveying gender fluidity and the freedom to be who you are. We can also observe a cross, which he often used alongside the Peace symbol.
In this video, Prince’s Friend explains: “Prince used the word Love and God interchangeably. It was about peace. It was about not being defined. It harmonized the conflict between man and woman, sex and religion, black and white.”
I believe this was both genuine and smart of him: bringing together pre-existing symbols to create his own, associating himself with such timeless and existential matters.
Nearly 15 years of working in branding and communication have taught me that stories that manage to be both unique and universal have the highest potential of attractiveness and engagement. This symbol, its reasons to be designed, the combination of graphic elements and their meanings are both easily linked with The Artist’s unique story, which is inspiring, different, valuable, but they are also connected to notions that can echo in everyone’s hearts and minds. It encompasses universal topics such as peace, love, sex, religion, gender inequalities… It becomes a political statement and a spiritual invitation.
Knowing who you are, having explored and freed yourself from others’ expectations equals having something to say. And that is a must if you want to express a truly powerful identity (and therefor, brand).
Neşem
Worlds. 