Last week I challenged readers to name the designer of the Smith, Kline & French brochure for geriatric medications (below), hinting that this person had also created the company’s logo, faintly featured on the verso side of the title page.
Created by Paul Rand in 1945, this logo was one of his earliest abstract corporate marks. However, its visual reference turns out to be more mysterious than the brochure itself.
I see the logo as an abstract Caduceus. A Caduceus is two intertwined snakes wrapped around a rod topped with a set of wings, worn as an insignia by the U.S. Army medical corps, among others. In fact, the Caduceus does not mean what it seems, owing to a historical error by the U.S. Army Medical Corps (a mistake in the military is known as FUBAR*). In fact, the Caduceus symbolizes Mercury, the Roman god of commerce and messengers. The symbol for medicine is actually the Rod of Asclepius (see comparative diagram), which takes its name from a Asclepius, the Greek god of healing and medicine.
(*Fucked Up Beyond Recognition.)
I’m certain that Rand designed SKF’s logo with the Caduceus in mind. The lines forming the voluminous shapes for the initials represent the snakes, and the initials, SKF, suggest the pole. The ribbon-like ends of the intersecting lines abstractly suggest the wings. If the Caduceus was incorrectly used as the medic’s symbol during World War II, by 1945 the mistake was probably accepted as proper. And Rand, always interested in creating symbols and marks that had multiple interpretations, would have taken the Caduceus on faith and seen it as appropriate for a major drug company—and perfectly suited for framing the three initials.
I had many conversations with Rand about the evolution of various marks, but SKF was not one of them, although I am confident he designed the logo that was in use from 1945–1960. Therefore, this is but a theory that I developed before an expert pointed out that the Caduceus (which is one of my favorite words to say) is not The Rod of Asclepius. If Rand had known, there would never have been such a well-balanced logo.
