I'm intrigued by the extreme horizontal/vertical picture compositions often seen in old Japanese Ukiyo-E prints, and that inspired this THB poster set. I was curious to see if I couldn't make a two pannel "cartoon strip" with these images, a kind of poster set which is actually two large "stealth" comic book pannels telling a kind of sequential story. Again, the logo designs are by myself and RINZEN.
We worked out the new THB logo in the same way we did the Year 100 logo. In this case, I wanted to emphasize the exotic desert setting of the THB stories, to suggest a sense of the mysterious, far-away, almost fairy tale mood of the book.
The design briefing was to find a logo which worked like a piece of intricate Islamic calligraphy, like something resembling a mobius strip-scimitar, or a tapered ribbon tied in a loose calligraphic knot. We tried to imagine the classic COCA-COLA logo as if designed by a Victorian-era Persian typographic artist, working on a project with an Arabic H.G. Wells.
RINZEN and I will be collaborating on the logo and book design for my upcoming French bande dessine book PSYCHENAUT, to be released in 2012 from Dargaud.
