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Designed by Alan Fletcher in 1989, the logo for the Victoria & Albert Museum is simple yet devilishly clever. Set in Bodoni, it brings the three letters of the museum's nickname, V&A, together as a unified symbol, achieved by Fletcher's decision to remove half of the letter 'A' and then use the ampersand to reinstate the missing crossbar. The resulting mark is distinctive but elegant.
Fletcher, who was working at Pentagram when he designed the mark, was initially commissioned by the museum to create a wayfinding system, rather than a logo. "Alan and I were doing a sign scheme for the V&A," remembers designer Quentin Newark, Fletcher's assistant at the time. "It was a way of getting around the museum, which is a very complicated building. Alan had this idea of a colour representing the direction you were facing, so red was north and blue was south etc. He had decided that the typeface would be as though it was something from the collection." The Italian publisher FMR had recently published a facsimile edition of the original Bodoni typefaces, and Fletcher settled on using this for the project. "I had to redraw that font for the banners," continues Newark. "Then while we were working on that, the design manager at the V&A, Joe Earle, was looking to try and tidy...