The Evolution of the logo
Our designer, Rob Bowker, shares the rationale behind the original logo and the new version.
The Quadrat
When Bill first asked me to develop an identity he was working in a room lined with colourful print-outs, visually describing funding sources, their values, longevity and accessibility. He had taken a vast amount of data and distilled it – made it accessible.
After some head scratching, I arrived at the quadrat, a square frame used by ecologists to make sense of vast amounts of data. It is thrown on the ground and what lies within is counted and classified according to the terrain, a meadow or a beach for example. Through extrapolation it saves analysing all the blades of grass and wildflowers in a meadow, or all the pebbles on a beach.
As a one-off exercise, the analysis doesn’t tell you anything especially useful but it does supply you with data which, over time or distance can be compared, visualised and acted upon.
Bao
Evolving from the Quadrat, reflecting more playful aspects of fundraising, the stones of the old logo led to the pits and stones of bao (or mancala). The pits through which the stones move during gameplay are regular and the transition of stones between pits is predictable but the outcome of the game relies on foresight, choices and quick cunning. A playful concept, but still stones.
The new logo describes a typical 12-pit bao board.
The objective is to gain some or all of your opponent’s stones. With roots in Egypt, bao is one of the world’s oldest two-player strategy games. It has been played throughout Asia and Africa for over 7,000 years.
Equiping people for strategic gameplay is, let’s face it, what Fundraising Training Ltd does. It improves your chances of success when competing for finite resources in a competitive field.