Imagine that pale virgin square on a weathered apartment wall, signaling an inspector that evidence has been removed from a crime scene. It’s not what’s hanging there that informs us, it’s what’s not there that alerts us to a critical message. Whether the hole or shape in question is unceremoniously carved from the guts of other graphic elements or if it’s deftly excised, leaving no trace of foul play, each serve the same purpose. These exist as the canvas on which the consumer will complete the story.
These are not merely a hidden negative space like the arrow in the FedEx logo or the bear on the mountainside for Toblerone. These fields were not designed to hide but to illustrate for the consumer an incompleteness that only they can solve. By engaging the public in this brandmark conundrum, we create an engagement that might otherwise be lost on the public. Certainly the surrounding evidence points to the solution, as in the logo for the Museum Reinhard Ernst. The open square could represent any one of the museum’s collection or insinuate less is m[ ]re.