Ville de Montréal, 1981 – What's the concept?
A look at Georges Hue's 1981 logo for Ville de Montréal.
What’s the concept?
The logo for ‘Ville de Montréal’, designed by Georges Huel, principally draws its inspiration from the city’s historical coat of arms, but is also a confluence of other ideas and representations.
The intersecting lines at the centre of the logo symbolise the city’s vocation as a crossroads of communication and civilisation.
These line work their way outwards to form a flower whose petals create the letters V and M, and four tessellating hearts.
The four hearts represent Montrealers’ attachment to their city, with the ‘undulating’ outline line referencing the island they live on.
Finally, the shape of the logo, described as ‘plant-like and aquatic’, expresses the richness of Montréal’s natural environment and the care Montrealers take to preserve it.
Outline Logos
To use an outline is to allude to something, to not make it heavy in its volume but to define it only by its boundaries. Line weight becomes of critical importance, especially around scaling and in the moderation of the immediacy of visual impact. Outline logos take more ‘reading’ but often benefit by that draw to look closer.
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