In 2007, we started the Southern Finnish Lapphund Society with the aim of promoting the Finnish Lapphund in the Southern part of the UK, as well as supporting owners and creating a community. Although we are proud of the logo we have used since the beginning, it was created at a time where our technical knowledge was a little limited, and we didn't understand, for example, how important it is to be able to scale a logo and to deliver it in appropriate formats for different uses. Over the years, as our website, newsletter and other publications can attest to, we have developed our skills and we thought our 10th Anniversary as a society would be the ideal time to give our logo a bit of a spruce up!
The original logo was based on a photo, which was then modified in Photoshop until we agreed it still looked like a Lapphund but wasn't too identifiable as a specific dog. We then had to cut it out of the original photo and delete the background - not our finest ever work when you look at it up close! It was very difficult to use any larger than a few inches wide, and the shades of grey occasionally made printing difficult
We asked the artist Fiona MacVicar, who is a Lappy lover herself, to have a go at creating a new friendly Lappy for our logo. She had lots of photos of different colours and sizes of Lappies, and she also met 'the real thing' to get to know the essence of a Lappy. She sketched by hand, in pencil first, and after a few modifications, the Logo Lappy was done.
We now had to digitise the image. We couldn't just scan the original as we would end up with the some of the same issues as the old logo. We chose to digitise it true to the original drawing, so we created a vector which exactly matched the hand drawn lines. We liked that the logo still had the hand made look and felt that it conveyed the artist's original interpretation of the smiling Lappy.
All there was left to do was to add the Society's name, and we had our new logo. We will be able to use it at any size, from the tiniest icon to huge prints thanks to it being a vector. We can also play around with the colour and can use it just black and white when needed. We are really pleased with the smiling Lappy - we hope you are too!