It’s been an endlessly busy couple of months in the studio and one of the many projects we’ve been beavering away on was the Scouts Australia’s new National Youth Council logo. It’s fair to say that as an old Scout, we’re pretty pleased that we managed to create something that has finally become part of the scouting movement if only in a small way and a long way away from home over there in sunny Australia.
The brief was pretty straight forward and focused – ‘create Scouts Australia’s new National Youth Council logo with a design that was both fun and vibrant, bold and felt part of the Australian Scouts other branded materials and had to work with the current Scouts Australia full or partial logo mark.’ We had a solid and well recognised palette of colours to work with – ‘Gold and Green’ synonymous with nearly everything Australian, and white and black. You couldn’t get any more Ozzy if you tried.
Sometimes in design we are lucky enough to have fate smile upon us. Sometimes it’s in the shape of a nice logo to work with or creative copy or breathtaking imagery. Other times it’s being given a brief by a client that almost answers itself and takes the designer by the hand and almost, walks them dream-like, through the design process to the point where they can see the answer floating fully formed in front of their eyes. That’s pretty much that fate decided to serve up for this job. Sometimes, things just seem so obvious you know that it’s probably the right way to go.
In the case of this job it was who the brief was for (Scouts Australia), coupled with their most well known part of their uniform (the Scouting neckerchief) and combined with the specific part of the organisation’s abbreviated tile the new logo was required for (the NYC). And there is was, sitting in the middle of the N and the C. The neckerchief (we always just called them ‘neckers’).
It’s fair to say not all jobs design themselves and it’s also fair to say that a good designer wouldn’t want it to be that way. Part of the joy of our job is the thinking and the problem solving, the looking for answers to a clients problem or requirement and succeeding in achieving the desired goal through talent, insight and a bit of luck. But sometimes it’s also nice to feel like the universe has taken a a few minutes to smile down at you and give you an easy ride and to work on something you love and believe in. Dib-dib-dib indeed.