Once we got a contract for a logo for an unusual intellectual bar.
It was so intellectual that we had to immerse ourselves in the history of psychoanalysis and philosophy of the 20th century before we started the job. And that was the client who made it unusual – French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who passed away almost forty years ago. Having mastered the spiritual board, we asked Jacques to talk about this project himself:
"Intellectuals have noticed long ago that the deepest philosophy happened in the bars.
I preferred to pass on my knowledge orally, without paper intermediaries. I did not write books, only ran workshops. And after my death, I opened my own place to use a bar counter in order to make the listener and the ideas man get closer."
"My place needed a catchy visual image. Something from the world of Symbols, ever-changing, archetypic and ancient, like the world itself. When the team offered a concept with shadows, I agreed without hesitation and even posed for the logo."
"Why the shadows? They are all we see, unable to learn the ideas, the origin of things. We’re looking at the shadows, rushing around the cinema screen, text signs, gestures of the actors – and we often don’t understand what they want to say.
My bar is as the cave from Plato’s allegory. You’ll learn to read the shadows and see the ideas here. Take a look behind my back and you will learn the stories: from "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka to "The Birds" by Hitchcock, from "Crime and Punishment" to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Come, and I will teach you to see their value.
Sincerely yours, Jacques Lacan."
