The Czech Presidency logo symbolises a Europe without Barriers

The Czech Presidency logo created by a young Czech graphic designer, Tomáš Pakosta, reflects both the Czech Presidency’s motto ‘Europe without Barriers’ and the European Union’s slogan ‘United in Diversity’.

The story behind the Czech EU Presidency logo

Anyone could enter the competition, and anyone could win. And there were certainly plenty of entries to choose from! Four hundred designs were entered in the competition for the Czech EU Presidency logo. Although the story of the winning logo began back in July 2007, it was not unveiled to the public for almost a year and a half.

For many months, only a few dozen people knew what the logo would be. ‘Making the logo public earlier would be against EU rules. It would be unfair to the Slovenes, who held the Presidency in the first half of this year, and to the French EU Presidency in office’, explains Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs. There has been more and more secrecy around EU Presidency logos since about 2004.

All those who came into contact with the logo before its official release had to sign a non-disclosure protocol. The companies involved would have been heavily fined if the logo design had been leaked. Not even the employees of the individual ministries or the Office of the Government knew what the logo looked like. ‘The idea behind was that the more people who knew the logo, the less control we would have over it,’ adds Pavlína Hladíková, the visual identity coordinator. As a result, the ministries could only use a substitute logo, given to them only in September 2008.
The Office of the Government announced the public competition to design a logo (in technical terminology ‘logo’ and ‘logotype’) in July 2007. Since it was a public competition, it was open to everyone – professional graphic artists, designers, students of graphic design, and the general public.

Enough designs to fill a gym

Roughly 400 designs, which had to meet various requirements – they had to be original, creative, impressive and intelligible – were submitted in the first round. ‘The entrants were asked to come up with variations of their designs and explain what their logos depict,’ says the visual identity coordinator.

The participants also had to comply with competition terms and conditions, one of which was the anonymity of designs. Breaches of competition rules caused 39 designs to be disqualified before the first round even started.

Even so, several large packages containing the designs for the future logo still made their way to the Straka Academy, the seat of the Office of the Government. On 5 November, the evaluation panel met for the first time. The panel comprised Alexandr Vondra, the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs; Radim Ochvat, then a member of the Executive Office of the Prime Minister, Marcel Sauer from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the graphic designer Aleš Najbrt from Studio Najbrt; Rostislav Vaněk, the head of the Graphic Design and Visual Communication Studio of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design and the chairman of TypoDesignClub; Alan Záruba, a lecturer at the same Graphic Design and Visual Communication Studio and Art Director of Czech Television; and Ladislav Kopecký from the Createam studio, lecturer at the Marketing Communication and Public Relations Department of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University.

Once spread out on desks, the designs filled virtually the whole of the Straka Academy’s gymnasium. The panel’s task was to pick five from the 350 before them. This took about half a day. Even then the competition was by no means at an end. A week later, the evaluation panel’s experts invited the creators of the top five designs to an information meeting. ‘They told the designers of the comments and suggestions the panel members had concerning the logo designs – what needed adjusting, what should be brought more to the fore, and the like,’ explains Hladíková.

Map of country abbreviations

One of the entries to undergo this procedure was the winning design by Tomáš Pakosta, a young graphic designer from the town of Litomyšl. ‘Tomáš Pakosta originally had several versions of his design. However, the panel was most impressed by his mosaic made up of the abbreviations of the EU member states and a similarly designed map of the European Union,’ says the visual identity coordinator.

In the second round of the competition, held on 30 November 2007, the panel reached a unanimous verdict on Tomáš Pakosta’s design. Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek confirmed the panel’s choice with his signature at the beginning of 2008. Thus, the Czech EU Presidency logo was born.

According to the evaluation panel, the winning design expresses both the Czech EU Presidency motto ‘Europe without Barriers’ and the European Union slogan ‘Unity in Diversity’. ‘The logo just came to me somehow – it was a coincidence. It is a play on colours, the codes of the individual countries distributed over a map of the Union and ultimately mixed into an equally balanced mosaic,’ explains Pakosta.

Visual identity

: Czech EU Presidency logo

However, Tomáš Pakosta’s work was far from over. He was set the task of preparing a manual, by summer 2008, that would determine the constituent elements of the Czech EU Presidency visual identity. The manual was used to harmonise the design of promotional items, the Czech EU Presidency website, official printed materials, and the indoor and outdoor decorations during the EU Presidency.

The logo will also appear on the special postage stamp issued to mark the Czech EU Presidency. For stamp collectors, the Czech Post has also prepared a First Day Cover with a sheet of stamps. A limited FDC edition will be available at local offices of the Czech Post.

The visual identity was brought to life with the assistance of other experts, including Rostislav Vaněk, Aleš Najbrt, Alan Záruba, Herbert Slavík, and Czech Television. ‘We discussed various issues with them. For example, where to position the logo on decorative panels so that it could be clearly seen when filmed by the television cameras, and what background colour should be used,’ says Hladíková as she explains the benefits of cooperating with the experts. The visual identity of the Czech EU Presidency now has a professional feel in all respects.

The Czech EU Presidency logo and the graphic manual cost CZK 300,000. Tomáš Pakosta received CZK 50,000 in prize money, and the manual itself cost CZK 250,000 to produce.