Hello. I'm David Galletly. I work on lots of the art direction here at Lost Map. I was having a little dig through my computer recently and found a bunch of work from the early days of the label and though it'd be cool to share some bits and pieces here. This is the story of our logo.
The Lost Map wordmark, bizarrely, came from this old Mackay and Jardine Ltd. advert. I have no memory of where I found this but I'd guess it's either from an old newspaper I bought in an antiques shop or some random scan I found online somewhere. Either way, it had all the letters I needed (L o s t M a p) and was at a high enough resolution to work with.
I like jigsawing together words from existing sources. It's a way to introduce a ton of limitations that can steer me off in directions I wouldn't head in if I was just typing things out in Adobe Illustrator. The aged print of the newspaper also adds some character.
Once the letters were on my machine, I began playing around with them. I assembled some compass-like shapes from similar scans and tried to feel out what kind of logo I could build using this little Lego set.
When I feel like I'm getting somewhere, I put together a sheet of designs to send over to Johnny. This makes it dead easy for us to compare, contrast and discuss what we like and what we don't. With Lost Map design work, I try to give Johnny as many opportunities as I can to give me feedback - Lost Map is his baby and his personality should poke through. This usually means he picks the wonkiest, weirdest option and asks me to make it wonkier and weirder.
After a few more back-and-forths, we had our logo. I know it gives every graphic designer who looks at it a headache because it's certainly not slick but, y'know, slick isn't what we strive for at Lost Map.
As far as I know, nobody's been daft enough to rock a Lost Map tattoo but if you're out there, let us know and we'll set you up with a freebie. Maybe a keyring.
We do plan to refresh the logo at some point in the near future. After working hard for 5 years, it, like us, is looking a little tired. Stay tuned
Hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you want to study the logo up close, why not grab one of our Tote Bags? As a wee treat, we've got a discount code for you - if you use the code TOTOLOGO at checkout, you'll get 50% off the price!