The story behind the ‘new’ HCS logo

A few years ago, there was much soul searching among the committee members in our search for a new logo. The public were consulted, external branding expertise was sought and three designs were shortlisted for consideration. For some reason, lost in the mists of time, the one selected at an AGM never made it into production and a fourth option came into being:

This one, the ‘Wonky Heart’, never made it to the website but did become immortalised on the Society’s Facebook page as follows:

A few years later, while putting together a simple newsletter to be printed in black and white, the membership secretary decided to put a simple illustration together for the heading of the newsletter.  The image, originally a photograph of the familiar town centre site of St Faith’s Church, was converted into a ‘pencil drawing’ using an old copy of Paint Shop Pro and the resulting image has stuck for the last few years:

During the recent rebuild of the website, I started playing with the same photograph of St Faith’s, looking for a different treatment and stumbled upon a fascinating piece of online image processing software, with some entertaining results.

St Faith’s according to Maurits Escher certainly had merit:

The Wassily Kandinsky version was particularly entertaining and incidentally provided the source of the original background colour to the website. (We’ll change that background colour from time to time, just to keep the site looking fresh.)

However, when the committee discussed the direction the logo was going in, head ruled heart and the suggestion was made that we try and simplify the original ‘pencil sketch’ and produce something more akin to the stylised ‘HMS Victory’ included in the Portsmouth News masthead.

So, after a few attempts with tracing paper and a felt tipped pen, we’ve arrived at this one:

It’s a simple device which highlights St Faith’s and the War Memorial at the heart of Havant town centre.  More importantly, it now ties the HCS Facebook page and the HCS website together. Love it or hate it, or somewhere in between, comments would be welcomed!