McCambridge’s. Galway. The two words just go together. McCambridge’s on Galway’s main street is a local landmark and a grand institution, a family business since 1925. They stock a sometimes astonishing range of eat- and drink-ables and go out of their way to find small, specialist and local producers. It’s a little intimidating to be asked to design a logo for a business with such a long history, but I think we did a good job together. Read on for more details on the McCambridge’s Galway logo…
I really enjoyed designing the logo with McCambridge’s. Galway needs local businesses like this, and I hope my little contribution can keep them strong for another few generations.
That’s the new logo on the shop awning, above. Here it is on a new label design:
So many labels
McCambridge’s have a lot of different labels. Like, really a lot. And each label has its own printing process or label-printing machine and they’re sourced from different printers or suppliers. One of the things we aimed for with the design is to streamline that process and reduce waste.
McCambridge’s Galway le Gaillimh le Gaeilge
Galway is probably the largest urban centre in Ireland where you can hear everyday Gaeilge (Irish) being spoken without having to go out of your way to find it. McCambridge’s work with Gaillimh le Gaeilge (gleg.ie) to include as much Irish as possible on their marketing material. Bags, for example, were produced in English and Irish versions. Here’s the Irish version:
And here’s their coffee cup, which comes in a bilingual flavour:
I don’t drink coffee. But people who do tell me that McCambridge’s Galway make a good cup. See for yourself sometime.
The Waterstones dilemma
When the UK bookstore Waterstones dropped the apostrophe that had featured in their name (Waterstone’s) for three decades it caused quite the hullabaloo. It was done, said they, to accommodate this new digital world where you can’t have waterstone’s.com. Well anyway, McCambridge’s kept their apostrophe. So instead of losing sleep over that we sweated over the placement of the “c” in McC. Tradition would suggest a higher position. Some radicals might prefer a lower one. We went all out crazy and put it in the middle, as you can see from this early proof where we were looking at the letter shapes to see what worked.
If you look closely, and are interested in such things, you will also notice that we did have a small apostrophe dilemma of our own. The top line shows the typeface’s apostrophe, which is weighted towards the bottom. I thought it looked awful, so I redrew it to be weighted towards the top. It is details like this that keep me up at night. “Oh Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be designers…”