Some people have asked what our logo is about, others have said it looks like it’s got something to do with Spain due to the colour scheme. This is fair and I can imagine a world in which the logo could change, some point in the distant future. With the growth and development of things like AI which make generating designs easy for anyone, why not take advantage? After all, if a logo fails to capture the company’s point, what is it for anyway?
My stance on this is far simpler. Essentially the basis for any logo must be simplicity. The easier it is to see and understand, the better. The heart is a universally recognised symbol of love and vitality, two things which I believe fit well with what we are doing. Walking tours are great for the heart, as they are mild physical exercise. Certainly they are better for you than bus tours.
Love is a synonym for passion and care, two things which I, and every guide I may eventually involve, possess in enormous quantities. There’s few jobs in the world which are more rewarding than entertaining and educating people at the same time and that’s what guiding is all about. Passion for the job and love for the city and its history is core. This extends to sustainability and finding a way to make the touring industry fit better within the city, its historical context and living community. We strive to direct this love into local businesses, who we will be patronising whenever possible so the city can benefit the most from the 4 million visitors we receive yearly.
“But what of the colours?” My imaginary adversary asks, “Yellow and Red are so clearly the colours of Spain”. Sure, those are in the Spanish flag, too, but so what? I adore the Spanish but a country cannot own a colour or combination of colours. Plus it has blue and white also, so how is that Spanish?
In reality, white and blue are absolutely Scottish colours. We used these on our flag it’s said for 1200 years (making it older than Denmark, take that, Danes (jokes I love you and you have great furniture)). It’s also customary in heraldry to reverse the colour scheme if you’re suggesting connection but not ownership. You can observe this on the coat of arms of Scottish universities, where they reverse the colours of the Scottish flag. The same happens in Nova Scotia in their arms, too.
So what you get from this is that we love being Scottish and are passionate about our history.
What about the yellow and red, then? Scotland has that link, too.
From our royal emblem of the 13th century.
On the logo, however, the yellow comes from sunshine. People from my tour will know I call it “The Sunshine Tour of Edinburgh”. This seems ironic because occasionally the city can be gloomy and wet, but it’s my overall philosophy of optimism. There has been a lot of terrible events in our history but overall we persist and remain an interesting and exciting place.
The red comes from blood. Classic colour use in flag and logo design, that blood also symbolises love, passion, and vitality. It memorialises the dead and preserves their memory in the stories we tell, passed on through generations of guides.
So hopefully it’s clear why the logo was selected. It’s simple, it’s vibrant and bold, it tells a story of what we are, what we care about, and it announces what we intend to do. Further, it’s based off a design made by my wife and kids. It’s that human touch which is so essential to the process. It is possible that a better design could be created possibly by AI, but that would be a soulless facsimile of human connection and tour guiding is really based on human connection. A two hour display by us is a thousand times better than anything a machine could produce on the topic of Edinburgh and her sensational life. Plus we are available for Pay What You Think It’s Worth / “free” so book now.
Essentially, it is conceivable the logo could change at some point but it has such meaning and sense of purpose that I can see it staying with us forever. This is a symbol forged by Edinburgh based hands which, hopefully, a great many of you will become acquainted with.
The writer of this piece is a storyteller of dramatic proportions.
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