I’m part of a local 15th Century reenactment group that has been going for a few years now. It’s been a loose-knit group for a while and I have been doing a few ad-hoc designs for posters or graphics when needed. We finally thought it was time to get a proper brand and group identity and I sat down to think out how I could create the brand.
My first task was to get to the bottom of what the group is. Our first few posters all played on gritty, dirty fighting which riffed on Game of Thrones or The Witcher but we’re more than that. We are men-at-arms, but we have more than that when we are at events. We have cooking, talking, and demonstrations and not everyone fights.
There’s that horrible myth that everything in the middle ages was dark and covered in mud but in truth, it was bright and colourful so I knew I wanted some bold colours. The name is a good driver as well. It had to tie into Suffolk and… well without at least one sword in the logo, it would be a crime.
A few sketches later…
I don’t sketch very well but it’s enough of a springboard for some ideas. I did loads but a few started to crystalise and I knew I wanted the swords crossed with the banner draped over the blades.
Once I had some direction I started to work in Illustrator.
This gave me a working concept but it still lacked something. The Suffolk part. At some stage, I was pointed towards the Suffolk County flag which is described as:
The flag is a banner of the arms attributed to Saint Edmund, bearing a golden crown “pierced” by two golden arrows against a blue background. Described heraldically as “Azure two Arrows in saltire, points downwards, enfiled with an ancient Crown Or.”
This gave me a new idea. Instead of arrows, I’d have swords.
The blue and yellow are the colours of the county so I started to build out new versions with some colour. I also felt the swords didn’t work for us. They’re one-handed arming swords and I wanted something bigger.
The final design has longer, two-handed swords, some subtle shading as well as a b&w version and a version with no background.
Once the rest of the group agreed they liked the design, (very little feedback which is always worrying) a large banner was printed to use at events.
I also arranged t-shirts and hoodies to be printed up with the logo. This means we can have non-reenactment people at events, who act as crew but they get worn to training as well as events or educational visits.
