This story brings back wonderful memories. Also horrible. It depends on which side we look at. More than a year ago, maybe two, I wrote a text about an establishment that was right in this place, where today we find another workshop of photocopies and handcrafted prints. That logo —Color Cuba if I remember correctly— is one of the worst I’ve seen in my life. Perfect example of everything that cannot be done in the field of representation. The current one is much better, but it can also be nice.
The workshop calls itself AKM. Very powerful, resounding and impressive acronyms. Shrapnel, glory, distant countries, dirty bearded soldiers who carry ideals and grudges on their belts ring in my ear.
The Automat Kalashnikova Model 1947, known by the acronym AK-47, is probably the most popular and recognized assault rifle in the world. Current has still been, without a doubt, the most produced and in full use wherever a somewhat heated difference of opinion develops. Those of us who comb gray hair have heard of its features and performance countless times. It is the rifle or machine gun that our army uses. Protagonist of hundreds of anecdotes in African wars and in many others. I perfectly remember his silly weight in some military practice, one of the very few I did. He held it as he would a numbed snake. A shiny instrument of death.
When I read AKM on the poster of the photocopies something sets off my alarms and I wonder how they got to the name. Knowing as I do the national average entrepreneur, I could venture as a first option that the owner is called Aníbal Kamane Moliner. He would have logic. It would be a very unique but possible confluence. Knowing as I do our creatives, I could venture, as a second option, that the machine gun’s chatter reproduces in some crooked way the cascade of printed sheets falling into the tremulous hands of the surprised client. Synonymous with speed, efficiency. It could also be a way of saying that although your technology park is old, it is also safe, solid, and operational under any circumstances. Or that the designer is passionate about weapons of war, or that the administrator’s girlfriend is a cannon. Anything. Because there are not many ways to connect AKM with a copy service.
Big brands often propose implausible logos, rather concepts. But they usually have a powerful conceptualization behind them that leads the receiver to fully tune in with their spirit and that of the product or service. When we use combinations of letters, sounds or images firmly associated with an established concept, we run the risk —and the collision is inevitable— that we incorporate into our claim the symbolic attributes and cultural resonances that the other already brings with him.
To get an idea of how this corridor attracts the darker energies, we go to the next workshop, right next to it. This is projected more colloquial, folksy, popular. “ARRIVE G”. A name that brings them because it is almost a proclamation. His projection is all innocent. I hope your business model is better targeted. If AKM turned out to be an excessively peculiar name for this kind of undertaking, LlégateA G seems to me to be a name devoid of meaning. It’s just a rather flippant invitation and a somewhat inappropriate way to approach a client. A dialogue between boys, in the rhythm of pachanga.
They built the letter G on or from an antediluvian microcomputer board. I imagine that with this they tried to validate the validity of their technology. And with this they distinguish themselves from the historicist and martial AKM. They show us the crown jewels on canvas. A couple of home printers and a spiral binding machine for a medical student’s graduate thesis. They have them around the corner. A curious detail is that the poster has been conceived in black and white. Unusual austerity for a printing business.
From the previous text we conclude, due to their differences, that we deal with captive clients. That everything is fine. That it doesn’t matter that they are born, that the important thing is that they breathe. A good thing ours have. They let themselves be captivated by transversal approaches. They make their winks from a position of arrogance. Silly it is true, but worth noting. Our entrepreneurs don’t care so much, they don’t need them, urgent sales. Because no matter how little they sell, they sell a lot. Always, or almost always, he gives them the account. It doesn’t matter how much the dollar rises or falls: Cuban entrepreneurs take it easy. It is a faith in universal balance that makes you want to cry and that is one of the things you miss most when you walk through the jungle armed with a set of plastic birthday cutlery.
