The story of our logo
The brand ZAJO has undergone a very dynamic development in 24 years of its existence. Naturally, the rabbit from our logo could not lag, and as the company grew and gained strength, he grew along with us to its present form. Read the story hidden behind the hare head that is currently decorating our products.
ZAJO has been writing a story since 1996, and over that time, we have replaced three different logos on our products, in different variations. The story of the very first logo, however, was not spectacular in any way, and was based more on the motto: "Better done than perfect".
Logo #1 - "Fat" bunny from a databank
If you know the story of our brand, you know that it started in 1996 with "golfky" - at the time trendy three-quarter hiking pants. Our founder Juraj Králik, also known as Zajo, then had 900 pieces of these trousers sewn, loaded them into his Skoda Favorit and visited stores throughout Slovakia to sell exactly 899 pieces.
"I went for a walk in the woods when I decided to have "golfky" made and that the brand name will be ZAJO," recalls Juraj. At the time, he didn't worry about the logo, the quality of the product itself was more important. "The truth is, I took this rabbit logo from a Microsoft database. It is necessary to realize that internet was a very rare thing, and perhaps there was not a single creative person in Slovakia," he laughs.
Logo # 2 - 100 marks for rabbit in motion
In the first five years of brand existence, the brand has grown rapidly, and the product portfolio has expanded significantly. At that time, in 2001, Juraj decided to move part of the production to Romania when he was approached by one of the local factory employees. "He was a graphic designer and sent me a sketch of the logo as it might look. He asked for 100 German marks," he says.
This logo lasted the brand until 2016 but went through several changes. "The logo was empty, and even the font didn't match it completely, so we decided to improve it sometime around 2006. At that time I was inspired by the shape of traffic signs in Australia, which draw attention to kangaroos, so in cooperation with a Slovak graphic artist we put a rabbit to this shape," recalls Juraj.
However, this logo has one extra version - since according to Juraj's words, it did not fully match with women's products, it also received its "female" version.
Logo # 3 - The work of real pros
The need to move the logo to a whole new level came in 2015 when the brand took a very serious approach to the matter. In the selection process, we chose the renowned German agency Pascher+Heinz, which specializes in sports marketing and works for brands like Adidas, BMW, Fischer or Dynafit.
"The goal was to make the rabbit and the inscription work together, but also separately. This was not true of the previous logo, and we found its limits here," explains Juraj.
We introduced the logo in 2016, along with a new website, and started a new brand era. We are proud of the current logo and will probably remain part of our products for years to come.
And what's next? Nobody can say that now, but one thing is for sure - it will not work without a rabbit.
