It looks like our post about Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ logo and its eerie similarity to one created well over a century ago created enough of a stir that it merited a response from agency co-namesake/founder Rich Silverstein. A generous source was kind enough to send us a memo that Silverstein issued to the entire agency just two days after our post. Guess we’ll see if this clarifies things for all of you. Here it is verbatim:
“From: Rich Silverstein <redacted>
Date: August 6, 2011 3:42:28 PM PDT
To: Agency Announcements <redacted>
Subject: Logo
Our new logo is old.
I’ve heard that people have been questioning our new logo. Allow me to explain. I’ve always loved timeless, beautiful things. So it’s not a coincidence that the logo looks like a 100 year old ligature. It was 100% intentional. I found it in my library in a book of ligatures that I’ve had for 30 years and always admired. I thought it would be nice to take something old and ignored and reimagine it. And that’s what I did.
I enlisted the help of a few talented people in the company and with full transparency we took the beauty of the original hand drawn letter forms and conveniently changed the C to a G, removed the O, and added a P.
Appropriation is a big part of our culture. Sampling is part of the modern music scene. Andy Warhol’s most famous silk screens were made from other people’s photographs. And Richard Prince blew up cigarette ads to make art.
Making something old new again was my full intention and I’m very happy with the outcome.”