Edinburgh Reviews has a friendly new and thistle-free logo

Hi gang, you will have spotted that Edinburgh Reviews has a new logo which depicts two figures, one clearly not human, together in an embrace.

We’re proudly Scottish and wanted to avoid some of the most popular Scottish iconography and visual cues, so we set out to design something that did not feature Edinburgh Castle, flags, thistles or even unicorns. We did want to show a sense of community, support, inclusion and working together, despite differences, to make the city a better place.

If those goals sound fanciful and ambitious, perhaps that’s why we turned to ancient Celtic gods for inspiration. Scottish folklore is fascinating, complex and not nearly as famous or well-understood as Norse, Greek, Irish or Roman. 

Artists had created some inspirational renditions of the horned-god Cernunnos, and academics will now immediately debate whether or not Cernunnos was Irish, Scottish, Celtic or Gallo-Roman. That’s a fascinating debate and one we’ll watch from the sidelines. 

Our new logo, designed by our very own Bronwen Winter Phoenix, represents two figures from Scottish folklore; a urisk and a green maiden, embracing in friendship. 

There’s good news if you like the folklore logo as much as we do! Edinburgh Review’s now has a Redbubble merch store, and you can buy this logo in the Not an Influencer range. 

Girdy was sat down, given a large flask of coffee and invited to type some words about the new logo and why we went down this path. 

“Supernatural Edinburgh? Folklore Edinburgh? I’m not even remotely surprised at myself for exploring this path, and delighted at the results. Readers might be more interested to know that the second place concept was a weird hybrid mashup of the letters ‘ER’ with the Anarchy A symbol. That might have looked cool in surprising places, but I’m happier to spread good vibes and fairies.”

Bronwen was wrestled away from a grumpy lizard and the siren lure of the art studio and made to say something about the logo. 

“I was delighted to accept the challenge of designing the new Edinburgh Reviews logo – and although, Girdy’s ideas did seem a little surprising to me at first, I completely understand them now and think it represents our brand just perfectly. It was really fun illustrating the urisk and green maiden embracing, then simplifying it down to the logo we have now. It also inspired me to illustrate more characters from Scottish folklore!” 

There you have it, folks; another reason to follow team Edinburgh Reviews on your socials with this chance for a splash of colour and a friendly logo to pop up in your feeds now and then. 

Links

• Edinburgh Review’s logo t-shirt.