City of Paris Modernizes Logo

By Delphine Hirasuna | March 20, 2019July 19, 2019

Ask people to name some of the most iconic symbols of Paris and they are likely to say the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Notre Dame Cathedral, among other landmarks. What they are unlikely to mention are the merchant boats that once plied the Seine. So important were these vessels to the survival, wealth and influence of Paris in the Middle Ages, a high-sided boat with a billowing sail was adopted as the heraldic coat of arms for Paris in 1358. It remained the city’s official emblem for more than a thousand years. The seal is typically displayed on public facilities along with the city motto “Fluctuat nec Mergitur” – Latin for “tossed upon the waves, but doesn’t sink.”

Over the centuries, the boat displayed on the coat of arms had been redesigned a dozen or so times, with artists striving for a more majestic look, sometimes by drawing tall-clipper-type ships with multiple masts. But in 1942, when Paris again modified its logo, it aimed for more historical accuracy and showed a high-sided, bowed gondola-like boat with a single mast. That version remained the authorized logo for Paris, until the city opted to modernize it to complement the graphic style of today.

Visual Merchandising

Urban Landscape – Hardware Window Dressing

By Delphine Hirasuna | July 15, 2009September 4, 2014

cole_5

In San Francisco, the best retail window displays can be found in one of the most unlikely places – a hardware store. With four locations in San Francisco, Cole Hardware has been serving local do-it-yourselfers since 1926. It lives by its slogan: “Hardware for the soul.” That soulful spirit is visible in its amusingly artistic window displays created by the two-women visual merchandising team – Noelle Nick and Dominique Tutwiler.

Nick, an engineer who once worked at Bechtel, and Tutwiler, who majored in illustration at San Francisco’s Academy of Art, have literally turned circular saws, toilet balls, rubber gloves and other utilitarian objects into works of art. One display, which they titled “Louvre,” presented ornately framed “recreations” of Van Gogh’s sunflowers made from yellow-rimmed circular saws in a yellow vase and Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel made from two rubber gloves striking an imitative pose. Benjamin Moore paint dribbled onto a canvas paid homage to Jackson Pollack’s abstract expressionist art. These window displays are not a departure from Cole’s hardware products. Nick says that they are made entirely out of products carried by Cole.