When the logo comes to life to tell stories of a sustainable future

What is the boundary between a logo and an illustration? What is the boundary between a logo and an illustration? 

Logos and illustrations are clearly two different things. The former are created following stricter rules of immediacy and comprehensibility, they must be simple and with limits related to readability and reproducibility in any format. The latter have endless varieties of style, format and complexity, as well as more multifaceted messages to convey. They are two visual languages that serve different purposes. 

The common territory is that of storytelling through ideas, and this is what the new A2A logo project has focused on: by working on the components of the logo itself, the message communicated is transformed, and it embodies the different values of the company.

Through their logo, companies have the opportunity to evolve from a logic of identity only, one that is symbolic and recognisable (“this is me”), to one of storytelling made up of shared values and aggregation (“this is what we believe in, what we can be together”).
The importance of the logo for a company is obviously extremely high: the logo is not only a visual symbol, but it's also the tangible expression of a company’s identity and mission.

A logo is often the first point of contact between a company and its audience, so it is crucial that it makes a strong and lasting impression. By modifying it, without distorting it, the logo in turn becomes a flexible communication tool that the company can use to talk to people and emphasise even more what values it holds dear.

It is precisely the use of the logo to represent the brand values and express them through ideas that is the basis of the “Live Logo” project realised with A2A. In my role as tutor, I guided the students of Polidesign and Naba in an illustrated interpretation of the A2A logo, to narrate the values that the company holds dear: respect for the territory, the environment and people, a new culture of sustainability.

Turning the A2A logo into an illustration meant stopping and reflecting on the different meanings of a sustainable future and trying to talk about sustainability in an innovative way, challenging clichés and reflecting on what could be some different perspectives for dealing with the environmental challenges of our time.

Everyone has a different idea of what a “sustainable future” means, and I think the point of this project was precisely asking the young people to reflect on what their vision was, and then tackling the arduous task of translating it into images.

Obviously, it was also important to make those young people understand what A2A’s values are, and how to talk about sustainability in a way that was consistent with the priorities and projects implemented by the company. Getting them to work on symbols, trying to go beyond the most obvious associations of ideas, is the goal I set myself. Doing so by talking about a subject like sustainability, which is often used as a somewhat empty buzzword, was a complex but interesting challenge.

Working with young people is always thrilling, especially when the delivery, as in this case, is so specific and not straightforward: seeing how everyone approaches the brief differently and how ideas take shape through discussion and brainstorming is fascinating; a far cry from my everyday work, which is largely characterised by being in my own thoughts and in solitude.

Watching the students approach this way of creating images for the first time - starting from concepts and words and looking for visual counterparts to enrich the message - was also useful for my part in producing the logo, it reminded me that the key step in a job like this is the initial research: being very knowledgeable about the themes and concepts in order to be able to explore them with greater confidence.

I tried to convey to them the need to produce as many ideas as possible for such a project, because often the first two or three that come to mind are banal and not really personal, but are instead expressions of a common conception. The point of the work is precisely to find a unique vision on such a complex subject, to express it by adding something to the theme, not limiting yourself to just describing it. I believe that, in the end, several of them succeeded.

There was also a great formal maturity on the part of some of them, proposals that were not only interesting in terms of content, but had a refinement in form that I had not expected and that pleasantly impressed me.