I am working to on a new logo for Ymer – I thought the most difficult part of the process would be coming up with a funky, creative, meaningful design – Wrong!

Surprisingly, the most challenging aspect of this process has been the positioning and font size of Ymer’s Chinese name. I never realized what an explosive/sensitive area this is…

The non-Mainlander perspective (inclusive of Hong Kong ren) is English should be the most prominent feature of the logo – if the Chinese name couldn’t fit, so be it.

The Chinese Mainlander perspective is English and Chinese should be on the same line and the same size – if the Chinese name couldn’t fit, make it fit.

What surprised me the most was how immaculately consistent these views were – in other words there were no exceptions – group stratification was absolute.

What does this say about cultural subtleties? I’ve been in Asia for over 10 years and it never occurred to me that this would be an issue – in fact, it never occurred to the Hong Kong ren living across the boarder, either.

This begs the question, can a non-Mainlander truly understand/relate to Mainland Chinese? Or is the question, can Mainlanders come to grips with the fact the not everything breaching China’s boarders will be localized/sterilized to satisfy local sensitivities – and that size doesn’t matter – it’s only a logo.

The net result of the conversations above is the logo below:

I haven’t decided if Ymer will go with the above design or with the logo the “way cool” and talented designers at US-based Sukamishi are working on. If you care, stay tuned…