Innerleithen, Scotland

Innerleithen’s coat of arms was unveiled in the late 1800s. It features the town’s much loved patron saint and vigilante St. Ronan, a medieval cleric who’s deeds were immortalised in one of the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott.

The original coat of arms is a beautiful intricately crafted motif but this makes it very difficult to use and reproduce within a modern digital context. Our goal was not to dismiss or usurp the town’s crest but to produce a simplified, deconstructed and newly crafted image of St Ronan that could be more easily used across social media, on merchandise, banners, signage etc.

The starting point for the creative process was our research into the imagery of brass rubbings. The monumental brass plaques from which these rubbings derive often appear in churches commemorating notable figures from the Middle Ages including saints and clerics. The newly created Innerleithen town logo of St. Ronan is our contemporary interpretation of this religious iconography.