By definition logoistic design should speak to the subconscious and to the intuition. A logo wants to be onomatopoeic, that is - according to Webster’s - in imitative harmony with what it represents. As an example, we cite a word describing the sound a tree makes when it falls: crack!
We found ourselves intrigued, admittedly somewhat randomly, by the logoistic possibilities of a scientific device known as the Venturi Tube.
Convincingly demonstrating the mathematics of Bernoulli’s Law of Fluid Mechanics, Herschel Venturi’s late-19th Century simple construct of a smoothly and gradually-narrowed carbon-steel tube offered physicists of the day a novel and reliable mechanism for measuring a phenomenon of obscure but vital interest – namely, the differential flow-rate of liquids through a pipe-channel.
Introduced to the public as a popular scientific exhibit at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (within the Beaux-Arts inspired ‘White City’ realized by Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham – also the designer of Wilkes-Barre’s 1914 white terra-cotta tiled 15-story Miners National Bank building,) the Venturi Tube was the catalyst for the development of modern hydraulics. And so, this modest device precipitated a sea-change in technology eventually realized in American manufacturing, large-scale construction equipment, automotive and aerospace technology, and most recently NASA’s rocket and space-shuttle programs - thereby invisibly changing all facets of daily life throughout the late 20th century.
As designers of the built environment, we are driven to consider the artful joinery of materials - concrete, masonry, metals, wood, glass, and composites – in essence, that unique province of architects. Consequently, we admire the simple but limpid clarity of Herschel Venturi’s intuition into the shape of the physical world. We sense in the mechanics of his invention a compelling analogy for the effect that design has on the act of building itself. In our imagination, the compression and release of a viscous medium through the Venturi Tube can be seen as analogous to those moments of revelation and epiphany characteristic of the design process itself.
Our logo’s funnel-shape is therefore a simple graphic abstraction of this historic mechanism, alluding to that phenomenon by which creative thought propels itself out of discrete moments of focused intensity.