Serifs and rotations are just two of the primary ways brand letters can be modified. Marks of Excellence: History and Taxonomy of Trademarks via We Made This The above brand, 2 – lazy 2 – P, is read as “too lazy to pee” And sometimes they could even be used to make a joke: The vast array of combinations made possible by these characters and variations ensures that unique and identifiable brands can be created –hopefully without repetition– using only limited formal language. From left to right: Crazy-A, Flying-A, Lazy-A, Walking-A The letters with “wings” for example, are described as “flying” while those with “feet” are, you guessed it, “walking.” An upside-down characters is “crazy” while a 90-degree rotation makes a character “lazy.” These colorful designations aren’t just cute nicknames used to identify the characters, but are actually a part of the name, a spoken part of the brand language, which like most western languages is read from left to right, top to bottom and, perhaps unique to brands, outside to inside.Ī few accepted variations on the letter A. Every addition and variation results in a unique character that is named accordingly. Each character can also be rotated or reversed. But these characters can also be embellished with serif-like flourishes to create myriad “ pyroglyphics.” For example, such serifs might include extraneous “wings” or “feet” added to a letter or number. But brands are most famously associated with the cowboys and cattle drives of the Old West, when brands were used to identify a cow’s owner, protect cattle from rustlers (cattle thieves), and to separate them when it came time to drive to market (or rail yards or stock yards).Īt its most basic, a cattle brand is composed of a few simple letters and numbers, possibly in combination with a basic shape or symbols like a line, circle, heart, arc, or diamond. Ancient Romans are said to have used hot iron brands as an element of magic. However, unlike the graphic logos and trademarked images of popular commercial brands, they must comply with a rigorous set of standards and are developed using a specific language ruled by its own unique syntax and morphology.Livestock branding dates back to 2700 BC, evidenced by Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. To the untrained eye, cattle brands, those unique markings seared into animals’ hides with a hot iron, might just seem like idiosyncratic logos or trademarks designed to clearly and simply indicate ownership.
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