The man behind Toblerone’s ‘bear in the mountain’ logo, on what makes an iconic image

Andrew David­son is an illus­tra­tor and graph­ic design­er with more than 40 years of expe­ri­ence. He has worked with major brands includ­ing Wait­rose, Bac­ar­di and Toblerone – for whom he clev­er­ly incor­po­rat­ed a sil­hou­ette of a bear into its Mat­ter­horn logo in 1990.

David­son, who grad­u­at­ed from London’s Roy­al Col­lege of Art in 1982, came up with the illus­tra­tions for a line of adult-ver­sion cov­ers for the Har­ry Pot­ter books. He has also pro­duced sev­er­al pieces of wall art for the All Eng­land Lawn Ten­nis Asso­ci­a­tion and, lat­er this year, will design the first sil­hou­ette of King Charles III for Roy­al Mail’s new stamps.

Here, he talks to Racon­teur about the chal­lenges of mod­ern brand­ing…

What’s your process for coming up with a logo? How do you start?

I work with, or have worked with, many dif­fer­ent design groups, includ­ing Turn­er Duck­worth, Pen­ta­gram and NB Design. Nor­mal­ly, one such group gets in touch with me via my agent, approach­ing me with a project they think I’m suit­ed for.

There’ll be a brief which has been pre­pared as a result of a meet­ing with a client. The project might involve mod­ernising an exist­ing logo, or more inter­est­ing­ly, cre­at­ing a brand new one from scratch.

Once I’ve spo­ken with the design group, I draw a selec­tion of pen­cil ideas onto typo­graph­ic paper. At this ear­ly stage, this gives me free­dom to explore dif­fer­ent approach­es to the brief. These can be lat­er reduced down to ideas which are then pre­sent­ed to the client for their com­ments and approval. 

I work using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods. Wood engrav­ings, for exam­ple, pro­duce a hand-fin­ished look which works well for craft beers or spir­its. Work­ing with brush and ink on Bris­tol board paper gives a sharp­er, clean­er look. The work is scanned and if nec­es­sary manip­u­lat­ed dig­i­tal­ly by the design group.

What’s it like working with huge organisations on such a visible part of their brand? Do you feel the pressure to get things right?

Since I’ve been work­ing as a design­er and illus­tra­tor, I have always tak­en the view that each job, and indeed each client, no mat­ter how large or impor­tant, should be treat­ed with the same amount of con­sid­er­a­tion and respect as small­er less pres­ti­gious com­mis­sions. Every busi­ness has to start at some point.

What happens if a client doesn’t like one of your designs? What happens if you don’t like their brief?

Thank­ful­ly, this doesn’t hap­pen very often because, quite sim­ply, if I’m not hap­py with the client, or indeed the brief that is pro­posed, there won’t be a good out­come. In any such instance, it’s best to polite­ly decline the com­mis­sion and sug­gest some­one more suit­able.

What logo do you wish you’d designed?

I am for­tu­nate to have worked with one of the great­est graph­ic design­ers of all time, the late Alan Fletch­er, who was one of the found­ing part­ners at Pen­ta­gram. Two of his designs spring to mind for their intel­li­gence and ele­gance: the V&A logo for The Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um and the logo for FedEx, which clev­er­ly inte­grates an arrow with­in the let­ter­forms.

Is there ever a right or wrong time to change a logo?

A busi­ness has to be aware of the social and polit­i­cal mores of the day. Some­thing depict­ed some years ago may now cause offence and not be accept­able.

In sport, for instance, the Wash­ing­ton Red­skins changed their name and logo to the Wash­ing­ton Com­man­ders to avoid fur­ther appro­pri­at­ing Native Amer­i­can cul­ture.

What do you think the new Toblerone logo should look like?

I haven’t seen the brief but it will be dif­fi­cult to achieve the instant­ly recog­nis­able char­ac­ter of the orig­i­nal, which not only gives a nod to the shape of the Mat­ter­horn but includes a hid­den bear, a ref­er­ence to the ani­mal which rep­re­sents the can­ton of Bern, where Toblerone comes from. 

My advice would be to try to keep it sim­ple. Don’t crowd the image with too many assets. Don’t veer too dra­mat­i­cal­ly from what the Swiss iconog­ra­phy leg­is­la­tion still allows to be used. Toblerone is a brand that is lucky enough to have a his­to­ry, so it would be fool­ish not to cap­i­talise on it.

How has social media changed the branding landscape?

There is so much com­pe­ti­tion on the inter­net for people’s atten­tion. Estab­lished brands have an advan­tage, because they have big bud­gets and can put them­selves in the right posi­tions.

In terms of new brands and logos, I think there is a pres­sure to be strate­gic. It’s about get­ting the logo seen where it needs to be seen and in front of who it needs to be seen by. In this respect, social media plat­forms are the new bat­tle­ground for adver­tis­ing.

In terms of design, that depends on the prod­uct and the com­pa­ny. But, again, my advice would be: don’t over­com­pli­cate an image. It needs to be bold and eye-catch­ing, able to cut through the noise and stand out from the crowd. The logo will need to be adapt­ed or adjust­ed to appear on dif­fer­ent screen sizes, so you don’t want any­thing that will make that too dif­fi­cult.