Finally - the story and evolution of MY brand!
Finally I am the proud owner of a registered TRADE MARK! (2014)
Oh, I have waited for this moment for 12 months or close to it. First up was the name of my business: GRAND IPR, this was way longer ago though and I was helped by Chris M when it came to deciding the name. That was back in 2014 I think?
The reasons why GRAND IPR was chosen are:
GRAND came from the Cinema owned by my late uncle in the centre of Copenhagen, called GRAND TEATRET. A place where I spent an awesome lot of time growing up, and having a fabulous time!
Grand means big in English & French
Grand means thousand in English slang
Yet there are many other synonyms for it: ambitious, awe-inspiring, dignified, glorious, grandiose, imposing, large, luxurious, magnificent, marvellous, monumental, noble, opulent, palatial, splendid, stately, sumptuous - just to pick a few.....
Other reasons why GRAND was such a brilliant name was that in choosing that as part of the name I send numerous greetings to my late uncle every single time I talk about it.
Apart from that the area of law that I specialise in is intellectual property rights and that means that the name makes even more sense, because films consist of a lot of intellectual property rights! And that is the reason for IPR. IPR stands for Intellectual Property Rights!
Then at a much later stage I did my utmost to have a brand or logo created*. So I spoke to a few people and then this guy Torben sat with me and said to me, how or what would you like for it to be written or what do you want it to look like? I then scribbled something that resembled the result as you see it below, however that wasn’t as beautiful as the final result:
Here you see two different versions of my logo or handwritten part of my trade mark. The writing was tilted so that it became more aligned. As you can tell the original was written near a corner in a sketch book.
He then told me: you have beautiful handwriting, you should use that! I protested for all I was worth. Not agreeing one bit. For a few minutes at least! I think I asked him if he was nuts, or something similar.....
He then very patiently built his case and argued that what I protect is unique and my handwriting is beautiful and unique! I sat back baffled. Really. My handwriting is beautiful? Oh my.
A great deal of time later, like years, I came across the graphic designer who then helped me vectorise my handwriting. Martin Rahr. I love the way he made it look. Decidedly more sophisticated and clean. You can still tell it’s my handwriting.
Here is a quick sketch that I made of the mark, I imagined at the time that the tag line from my mothers linage was to be part of it. Until I came to realise that Dulce Periculum might be misconstrued and so I abandoned it. This was either sketched with coal or a 9B pencil.
I sent this to my graphic designer, who then came up with this more polished & clean version for me, I did ask for the coat of arms or shield to stand out a bit from the page to make it look like it is in 3D and not just 2D. Also I asked for the arrows to be turned up wards:
And YES I love it! It signals precisely what I want it to signal. Security, Fighting, Protection, Intensity, Fervour, Eagerness - again just to pick a few. The colours that I don’t claim ownership of are: Platinum grey, dark blue and black. I wanted it to be sophisticated.
What is even better is that the same graphic designer, Martin Rahr, also created this for me:
This means that I get to have a unique registration symbol to use next to my registered TRADE MARK. What's not to like?
The inspiration for the look of the logo was on one hand the coat of arms, from my fathers linage Munck af Rosenshöld*, you can find it at the bottom of this page. That’s not all though. My mothers linage has a coat of arms too and apprently bits and pieces were borrowed from other coats of arms. At least that’s what I have since learnt. That particular coat of arms wasn’t created in the true heraldic tradition where by the shield is somewhat in the centre with supporters on either side, the top is adorned with crown, helmet, torse and crest, not to mention the mantling. On the shield itself are various different areas that basically traces the achievement of arms. At the base of the shield is then a compartment and below that the motto or slogan.
Looking closely at my mothers linage coat of arms it’s a bit peculiar looking compared to my fathers linage coat of arms. All I know of my mothers linage is, and it may be nothing more than a fantastic story, that a Knights Templar, allegedly from Spain, had fallen for a French woman and they eloped together as a Knights Templar wasn’t supposed to marry. They stopped in Holland and took the name Reumert. What happened to his real coat of arms I have no idea! I can’t imagine a Knights Templar not having an actual heraldic coat of arms!
My fathers linage was knighted, I remember a situation where I as a child of maybe 8 or 9, was talking to my Swedish grandmother and she was being a little snobbish in that moment because she was showing me the coat of arms of her liange and I then told her that my mother’s linage also had a coat of arms. And she rather baffled said that she didn’t think my mother’s whomever had been knighted. With a child’s logic I said they must have been. Now I don’t actually know. That’s the truth of it. Both of them provided me with inspiration though.*By the way it is not a mistake that I have written af, Danish, rather than av, Swedish, because my Swedish relations do write Munck af Rosenshöld with the Danish af, on their website!
The blue, yellow and red heraldic coat of arms on the left, belongs to Munck af Rosenshöld and the brass non-heraldic coat of arms on the right belongs to my mothers linage Reumert.