"Here there is hair": The former director of IES Josep Maria Llompart compares SIAU's image to a testicle

PalmaThe former director of IES Josep Maria Llompart, Jaume Salvà, sent an extensive analysis of the SIAU logo, the union that had most criticized his management at the head of the center. Salvà sent it to the organization just after resigning, a decision that ended weeks of unease between his supporters and detractors in the institute's cloister.

In the exhibition, Salvà assures that the logo "does exactly what a logo cannot do: it activates a mental image that you do not control... and there is no going back." He then states that "before 'union' or 'teachers,' the brain reads something much more basic: an organic shape, hanging, with a lower appendix and three lines coming out from the top." As he writes, "the involuntary reading is immediate. It is not a subtle metaphor or an intellectual abstraction. It is anatomy." And he concludes: "If the first reading is 'testicle,' the institutional message is already late for class.

The former director also states that "the three lines coming out from the top" are "key" because "they function like the three strokes of a vignette that, unintentionally, tell you: 'There is hair here.'" As he adds, these lines "do not offer any alternative idea; they reinforce the bodily reading." In his analysis, Salvà writes that "this is what kills the logo: it gives no clues to read something else into it." He also considers that "if it was intended to be a stylized 'A,' a gesture, a person, a symbol of collective voice... there is no structure that leads you there" and that "abstraction works when it is ambiguous but oriented. Here it is ambiguous, yes, but oriented in the wrong direction.

Unintentional joke

Regarding typography, he maintains that "'SIAU' below also does not act as an anchor" because "it does not dialogue with the symbol, it does not resignify it, it does not domesticate it". "The result is as if the text were saying 'don't look at me like that': it points to the drawing, but does not correct it", he adds. The former director also writes that "a visual identity of this type should convey clarity, solidity, confidence, collective, defense". On the other hand, he considers that the logo "communicates an unintentional joke" and states that "the worst sin in design is not being ugly: it is being comic without wanting to be. Humor is not controlled; it is the audience that laughs, not the author who decides it".

Furthermore, he maintains that "when small, in an email signature, a favicon or a photocopy, the symbol is further simplified" and that "it becomes a toilet pictogram the fewer pixels you have". The text concludes by stating that "for now, what we have is an identity that, instead of representing teachers, seems to represent an urgent visit to urology with three straight lines that leave it 'well underlined'".

SIAU's response

SIAU responded to the analysis with a letter thanking Salvà "for the sustained interest in our corporate image" and assures that they have been "impressed by the symbolic analysis capacity" of the former director. "We had not met anyone capable of developing an interpretation so close to reality," states the union. The response continues by assuring that, when the logo was created, "the objective was even more earthly, 'anti-graphic,' and absurd than you describe." "We see that, in our objective, at least, we have succeeded fully, which pleases us enormously," he adds.

The union also thanks Salvà for having dedicated "their valuable time to carry out such an extensive and accurate analysis" and defends that "freedom of expression —also graphic— is part of the educational ecosystem" they defend. Likewise, it assures that it will continue "focusing efforts on the essential: the defense of the rights of those on the front lines, including those who, from one day to the next, return to the trenches: the classrooms". The text concludes with a rhetorical question: "What can be more beautiful and aesthetic in this world than to be able to express oneself in complete freedom without fear of suffering reprisals from those who have lost all connection with reality and the daily life of the true working class?".