We are always asked about the name of our studio - Armadillo.
Not an obvious choice for a contemporary Judaica design brand.
A couple of week ago a customer from Texas, where armadillo's still live - asked us again, 'I did not think armadillos lived in Israel, right?' she said ...
That is right, there are no armadillo's in Israel.
When we first had to choose a name for our studio, about 20 years ago - our main focus was educational projects for kids, we've designed games and hands on exhibits.
We were looking for a logo that we could illustrate, and will have a nice sound.
In addition - Hadas's father came to Israel from Argentina, where he was born and raised, the Kruk family has warm feelings to America's culture and the Spanish language.
So - Armadillo was a perfect choice!
Our first logo type had a nice draw of an armadillo, a couple of years later we've updated the logo - cleaned some elements - but kept the main original concept.
Modern Judaica gradually became our main focus in the last decade.
We developed our handmade Judaica collection parallel to selected industrial design projects we are still accepting.
We asked ourselves again - why armadillo?
This question became an issue as our studio developed its current path, do we have to find a new name?
We were thinking about it so much, we doodled and sketched many new combinations of names, words and initials, we even consulted a name expert!
Finally - we could not let go of our original studio's name, it is part of us, we are used to it, people here in the art and design community, call us - the armadillo's, whenever one of us appears alone in an event - everyone asks - where is the other 'Armadilla'
We did make a deep process renewing our logo.
First decision was to let go of the little Armadillo illustration, refer to 'Armadillo' as a brand name, part of our DNA, and combine it with our motto 'Judaica Lovers'
Many well established brands re-design their logos lately in a very clean style, too generic to our taste, Oded Ben Yehuda demonstrated this trend lately in his excellent design column in Xnet.
We skipped this trend, we wanted new logo to be able to stand alone as a small piece of design-art, to make a statement of hand craft, and distinguished identity. we hired lettering artist GuyTamam to design our new logo, and we love it!
Yet - apparently - we are not the only ones who found connection between armadillo and Judaism - we were happy to find this connection at an old episode of the popular cult sit com - 'friends'
the Holiday Armadillo