Freelance designer Paula Hateley AKA Phat Design has recently completed the logo redesign for YGT, a Manchester based company specialising in Anglo Chinese Trade & Communications.

The design brief was to create a bilingual logo which works on multiple levels. Ben, MD of YGT explains, “When Chinese people look at other company logos they like to see multiple meanings. For example, the logo for the Beijing Olympics has at least 3, if not more, different meanings.”

Paula and Ben worked on a number of different designs before finding a way to make the Chinese characters stand out and plant a subtle meaning that YGT’s Chinese customers will feel very comfortable with.

Ben explains, “The red character ‘?’ (YING) means ‘England or English’, the blue character ‘?’ (GUO) means ‘country’, and the amber character ‘?’ (TONG) means ‘understanding or communication’. The height of the three circles represent the intonation of how Ying Guo Tong would be pronounced in Mandarin.‘?’ (YING), the red character is middle flat tone,‘?’ (GUO) the blue character is a lower tone and‘?’ (TONG), the amber character is a high tone. In addition to this, red traditionally represents China and red, white & blue traditionally represents Britain, while the mixture of Chinese characters in white is very symbolic of our company’s work between the UK and China. We are really delighted that Phat Design got this absolutely spot on."

Paula says, “I really enjoyed working with Ben on this and am thrilled that our finished logo is not only aesthetically pleasing but has so many meanings on so many levels.”