Two Languages, One Logo
February 17th, 2008, 6 Comments »
Morocco’s first and official language is classical Arabic. Nearly everybody between the ages of five and sixty also seems to speak French. As Wikipedia indicates, French is “taught universally and still serves as Morocco’s primary language of commerce and economics”.
The situation reminds me a bit of things back home, though obviously most Canadian anglophones (while spell-checking that, I learned a new word: Anglophobia. I’m anglophobic about British tourists.) don’t use their French very often. One similarity is how often the two languages–Arabic and French–appear on packaging. Canadians will be familiar with this two-sides-of-the-cereal box phenomenon.
I particularly admired how gracefully Oulmès mineral water deals with this issue. They integrate the two languages into one logo:
The Arabic is interwoven into the French. Isn’t that clever? Admittedly, it makes both a little difficult to read, but I think people will recognize the word mark and brand more than actually read the words.