Thanks very much again to Paul for this next instalment of his wonderful guest post series.
You can find all of the 'Filohax' posts here. There is an index of all the previous filohax posts here.
Spine-less is more
Dominique made an interesting comment recently about Filofax without logos on the spine.
Line up left to right: Winchester Croc 7/8, Winchester 7/8, Winchester 7/8, Gloucester 7/8, Grosvenor 7/8
I'm from the twentieth century, and her comment reminded me of a peculiar British trait that I think was superseded when the 'Americanisation' of British culture really accelerated in the 1980's - 'unostentatiousness'. The 'no logo' spined Filofax were a product of an era when a product signalled its worth by its quality, not by marketing.
I think it's why the mark 'made in England' was kept on the inside cover- it wasn't done to 'show off'!
However the British have also always had a strong paradoxical streak - who could ever say our flag was unostentatious?!!
I’ve heard it said that the addition of the f on the spine was an attempt to make a clearer, visual distinction between the Filofax brand and the rapidly growing competition at that time. This does seem plausible. An oval surround was also added later to increase the prominence.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely right. The world was awash with cheap, generic organisers in the very late 1980s. The finances at Filofax were collapsing as people would not (and didn’t need to) pay high prices for a Filofax organiser that externally looked almost identical to an unbranded one. The “F” helped to distinguish the brand and make it appear more exclusive. I don’t recall anything subtle about it - reviving sales (and subsequently, in the early 90s, decimating costs by moving manufacture to China) was everything!
ReplyDeleteI was wondering when the 'rise of the logo' occurred. The closest I could find around a discussion of that, with a cursory search was this article about the more recent decline of the logo...
ReplyDeletehttps://sociallifemagazine.com/luxury-lifestyle/decline-of-logo-rise-of-experience/
At least it acknowledged the 'messaging' that logos had provided.