The Fendi Competition.

The task was to find something really new that at the same time had to represent something of the classic spirit as well as renew it totally. We were especially encouraged to use some kind of Photoshop technique to make explode the old sign and transform it into something else.

Well, this was one of the rare cases where it seems wise to us to totally ignore a briefing. At least, for what regards the creative direction it seemed to prescribe. And to be honest, not one attempt was made in this direction. For there was no financial pressure, what had we to loose?

It became very quickly clear to us that what ever image like solution we would present, it would never keep up with the elegant, somewhat strict, fashion style as it is imposed by the almost classicist brand. Our feeling was totally different and we decided to follow its ways.

First we reconstructed the classic signet. We saw that another way to create the two F shapes is to put a cross bar over its base construction. Thus the left and right side wings could present the two countered letters. Now, what if we’d use this instrument instead of the F’s themselves?

Our Fendi logo suggestion made a second place. We never saw the first winner but, what was more important, Karl Lagerfeld used the new Fendi Bar as backgrounds for his photographic campaign that year and they even introduced a colored crossbar within the house’s main logotype ‘N’.

What was once meant as an alternative for T-shirts print ons has become an important corporate design element to the famous fashion griffe. We felt very honored and are certainly proud of our intuition to prefer a simple graphic idea that could be used as a versatile i-c/r-onic sign.