Pain
Watch out! Posh sandwich shop Le Pain Quotidien is expanding (it began in Brussels and then went Paris, New York, Los Angeles and now London and beyond), laughing in the face of the credit crunch with its expensive organic coffee, bread and cakes. It's not exactly somewhere you'd pop into regularly, unless money was literally no object, and I wouldn't ordinarily give the nod to a chain that's selling "a lifestyle" or that has a "philosophy", but the atmosphere is nice, the furniture wooden and the cakes quality. The reason I mention it at all is that the logo's starting to bug me. What is it? I'm feeling that there is bread in there, but is the bread the almond-shaped bit bottom left, or the "grainy" looking rectangle that forms the background? And if so, what the hell is the shape in the middle? Let's have a guessing game. It's a lot cheaper than eating in a Pain Quotidien.Q. What is the Pain Quotidien logo supposed to be?
Points scored for good suggestions, good objections and for actually cracking it.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 5:53 PM
22 Comments
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22 Comments:
The World Trade Centre made out of granary bread - trapped eggs are plunging to their doom to escape death (egg a. looks nervously on as egg b. takes the plunge.)
It's either a Frenchman crapping a loaf out a window in a pebble-dashed building
or
One of those 'bloomer' loaves and a bread oven.
It looks like a cycling helmet on a set of bathroom scales to me. Strangely, having worked that out, I'd kill for a panini.
I reckon the grainy looking rectangle is a stone oven, and the almond thing is some bread happily flying out of it.
PROOF?
http://www.smokingpizza.com/Outdoor_Kitchen_Project/816_Beginning_Oven_Stone_Fullsize.jpg
Considering the religious meaning of the name, perhaps it is a bread confessional? Either that or a bread bin of some kind.
I'm guessing the logo is of an oven with a loaf rising in it, and another loaf outside. But I tend to think that a logo should make better visual sense and require less decoding. (Some logos that are supposed to be obvious are unfortunately susceptible to alternative interpretations; e.g., the one for the London olympics or the one for the liberal democrats.)
I'm guessing a rustic stone oven, but as the name translates to The Daily Bread, I can fancifully see a loaf of bread reading its copy of "The Currant Bun".
Probably an article on broken breton, the risk of knives to the bread population at large, how dough isnt worth as much as it once was due to the breaded crunch.
Turn to page 3 for some baps presented by a self-raising loaf called feeley and later for hot air fresh from the oven presented by a tub of dough called Gaunty who when not giving the french stick talks a load of cobblers.
Crumbs better stop now...
I think the almond is a hot, just-baked "boule" that is flying out of the oven - another one is already baking inside the oven. The oven is the open kind and is differentiated from the background by drawn-on flecks. I think it's a terrible logo.
It looks like my bathroom scales...
I'd say the almondy thing is bread. I'm not confident about anything else, but perhaps the shape behind is an abstracted sandwich booth, and a sandwich vendor with a huge bald head is kneeling down behind the counter. Because he's shy.
i'm no baker but i reckon it's supposed to represent a rustic bun in an old-fashioned oven, like what you'd find in a hovis ad's kitchen. the coffee bean shaped thing might be a warm, freshly minted loaf? maybe that's how the french make their pain?
I'm with Jenny and Mckinder. The flecks in the 'oven' suggest rustic stone AND grain. Mag-frickin-nifique. BTW Andrew, is bread ever baked in your household? You can't beat home-baked as a rule.
Anna
If there's one thing we're better at in the UK than on mainland Europe it's logos and graphic design. Whenever I go to France (a lot) it's as if all their designers are stuck in the 80's and early 90's.
It's a French game known as "bread rugby". The "breadball" is being kicked into the "breadgoal". Every time a try is scored a team of bakers must bake a new "breadball". And all the players are made of bread too.
After a little digging I found this:
'The company is attempting to create for its customers a compelling story, one demonstrated at every touchpoint in the retail experience. If successful, Le Pain Quotidien will stir powerful emotions that transcend its bakery products to become something far more – a meaningful part of the lives it touches through a relevant, repeatable and evocative experience.
It’s the difference between attracting the consumer, rather than chasing them.
The difference between competitive advantage revealed daily on a P&L, or just another bread shop.'
Which hasn't got us any closer to the truth, but has hopefully made us all so nauseous that we'll now boycott the place.
I've got a shopping bag a bit like that, with horizontal wooden handles slotted across two fabric verticals. I just stuck a loaf of bread in it, with a cheeky crust peeking out the top, and it looked quite similar. If I had a second loaf to balance against it, I reckon that'd be it.
Do I get a cake if I get it right?
It looks like some 1970's style bathroom weighing scales with a piece of bread perched precariously on the edge. I think this carries a dual meaning; firstly, bread consumption equates to danger and excitement... you are literally living life on the edge, like a piece of bread wobbling on the edge of a bathroom weighing scales; secondly it may be trying to show this bread as light and contributory to a weight loss program by saying this bread is like bread that weighs as much as bread that is only partially on your scales, as opposed to bread placed centrally on the scales.
(Apologies I haven't read all the other comments so forgive me if someone else guessed this too).
PS - Andrew, how does the guy in the Independent on Sunday get away with writing an article on indie music that seemed to consist entirely of other people's quotes (including yours) rather than an original thought?
I think it is a bird's eye view of a man with square genitals, like maybe the policeman from Larry the Lamb. But, he is a policeman who has been put in prison and has decided to saw off his willy.
So, from the top down we are seeing a set of hairy square bollocks, plus an oblong cock which has been sliced exactly at the point where it started to taper off into a normal cylindrical cock. Perhaps the policeman had oblong foreskin and an acorn shaped bell end (which is why he felt the need to saw it off with a razor blade). The result is some mutilated toytown genitals left as a timely reminder of the Pain Quotidien, i.e. the sheer agony of being different from the status quo.
That is probably what it is.
Cheerio
Steve
It's a bread basket, no? The better to transfer your daily bread back home.
Is it perhaps Avon Barksdale hiding behind the counter in Proposition Joe's electrical store?
Can't get more quotidien pain that The Wire muthafucka!
Yes, I really see a bald man taking a painful dump in an outhouse, and it flying out the window. I'm sure it is supposed to be a stone, baking oven in France though. It could be (much) worse ... it could be the UK 2012 Olympic logo.
Isn't it a face, and the thing at the bottom is a tongue smacking its lips in a cartoon style ?
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