You probably saw this symbol a lot in the days following Queen Elizabeth's passing.
Her Royal cypher. Now Britain has a new king, and along with all the pomp and circumstance
come all the little details of installing a new monarch – including a new cypher,
King Charles's personal monogram. So in this video I'm going to break down its design,
what makes for a good monogram and see his compares with those of the late Queen,
Britain's former monarchs and the other six remaining kingdoms of Europe.
There is a litany of symbols and icons associated with royalty, all with very specific heraldic
terminology. That’s a whole can of worms that I'm not going to crack open today. There are
many resources on YouTube where you can learn more about heraldry. Nerd recognise nerd, but I'm going
to disregard all the heraldic jargon and focus on sharing my own perspective as a graphic designer.
That’s because in many ways the Royal Cypher acts as the Monarch's logo. In
fact if you search for “Queen Elizabeth logo” these are the Google image results.
Through her 70 year reign the EIIR cypher served as the Queen's personal brand. It was emblazoned
everywhere from the throne where she was crowned to maps for her lying-in-state.
Her cypher was used by agencies ranging from the postal service to the police and armed forces;
on grand palaces and mundane office buildings; from monuments to memorabilia. Whether you
support or oppose the monarchy, if you lived in Britain or a part of its former empire
you're likely familiar with this design even if you never knew that it was called a cypher.
Monograms are becoming rarer over time but famously the logos for the New York Yankees,
General Electric and Louis Vuitton are all monograms.
Given that ubiquity the Royal Cypher needs to be a robust piece of graphic design. The franking
of mail from Buckingham Palace will be the first use of Charles's new cypher. That's a very small,
low fidelity, black and white format (one of the worst case scenarios for any design) but the
cypher also has to work for ornate applications like ceremonial uniforms, oversized on the sides
of buildings and even for specialty techniques like stone masonry and cast iron street furniture.
The Royal College of Arms is an institution that deals with coats of arms and other aspects of
heraldry and they've been designing the Royal Cypher since the 15th century. In particular
this one was designed by the calligrapher, heraldry artist and coin designer, Timothy Noad.
When compared to his late mother's cypher the King's design is immediately distinguishable
due to the interwoven C for Charles and R for Rex. Unlike Elizabeth's which had the E and R
separated with the Roman II, the Roman III is nestled within the counter space of the letter
R in the new cypher. As a monogram it strikes a nice balance between positive and negative
space and the interweaving between R and C is well executed, with the R's stem resting
above the C on the left and the C sitting atop the R's leg on the right. The alternating back
and forth between the two helps to integrate them into a cohesive figure while still being
readable. This is actually harder to pull off than it looks. There's an art to finding a way to make
the letters knit together without breaking up the shapes that make them distinctive.
Take a look at this monogram from the Toronto Transit Commission to see how this kind of thing
can easily go wrong. These letters don't alternate in front and behind each other,
they just sit stacked on top of one another. Instead of creating an interlaced monogram it
looks like a jumbled pile of letters. Because the positive and negative space weren't considered,
it feels cramped and awkward and the letter forms become fractured. Most clearly in this
tiny sliver of a C poking out from the back. Fortunately the artisans at the College of
Arms did a much better job with the King's monogram. It feels like a real step up from
the outgoing one. It's more compact and elegant by comparison, with more delicate lettering. When
we compare the two R's side by side we can see that the overall stem weight is lighter,
the serifs are finer, the bowl is enlarged and the leg is more curved than in the late
Queen’s. No doubt Timothy Noad’s calligraphic background was a great asset in designing this.
Speaking of calligraphy and lettering, if that's something you'd like to try for yourself,
you're in luck because I've just created a short course on how I do calligraphic style
lettering on the iPad. It's available to watch for free on the Envato Tuts+ channel. In it,
I share my entire workflow from Procreate to Adobe Illustrator
and take you through the process of creating a piece of lettering art for
print or social media. Link will be in the description as well as the end of the video.
I also want to take a moment to thank Envato for sponsoring this video and briefly tell you
about Envato Elements. Elements is a creative subscription service that includes millions
of design assets, video and graphic templates, fonts, and brushes. The affordable subscription
gets you unlimited access to their huge library of creative elements for your next project.
Long before they approached me to sponsor the channel, I've been using Envato Elements for
both my YouTube videos and my work as a graphic designer. The assets are high quality, and their
templates can give you a great place to start when you’re working under a tight deadline or budget.
When you sign up through my link below, you'll receive a 7-day free trial and you'll be able
to keep any assets you licence even if you decide to cancel. 7 days is roughly half the
term of a British Prime Minister these days, so this is a fantastic offer! Thanks to Envato
Elements for sponsoring the channel and check the description or pinned comment below to try it out
for yourself.
Another new design feature is a change of crown. Whereas Elizabeth used St Edward's crown,
King Charles has two versions of his cypher, one featuring
the Tudor crown and the other featuring the Scottish crown for use in Scotland.
Side note, Queen Elizabeth also had a Scottish variant of her cypher but it was rarely used. The
initials EIIR come from her decision to adopt the royal style, a kind of formal title, of Elizabeth
"the Second". However Scotland never recognised Elizabeth the First, as they already had their
own queen in Mary Queen of Scots at the time. It's quite a touchy subject and naturally when
the Royal Mail first installed post boxes in Scotland with Elizabeth the Second on them,
people were *less* than impressed. In fact they were so unimpressed that in Edinburgh
they blew up a pillar-style post box with gelignite. Following that the post boxes and
postal vans in Scotland only displayed the Scottish crown with no royal cypher. We'll
see if Charles decides to put his cypher on Scottish post boxes any time in the future.
A crown can be rather difficult to work with as a graphic. After all,
its purpose is to be as elaborate and ornamental as possible, the polar opposite of a clean and
clear pictographic approach. It can be difficult to render with the proper amount of detail to be
clearly understood and recognised but simple enough to reduce down for production at small
size. To help deal with this, the black and white version of the cypher has fewer pearls
along the top – 7, 4 & 7 – than the full colour painted version which has 9, 5 & 9.
We talked about how many places the Queen’s cypher was used. Many of those will now
need to be replaced with the king's new cypher, gradually over time. However,
one place they will not be replaced directly is on post boxes. Post boxes bearing previous monarchs
cyphers have historically been left alone – mostly because a cast iron post box is meant
to last many lifetimes. Indeed it's possible to find ones dating back to Queen Victoria still in
use. So let's review some of those historic cyphers to see exactly what they were like.
Queen Victoria's cypher, the first to appear on post boxes, integrates the two letters by using
the right half of the V to form the stem of the R. Now I understand it's a different time,
different aesthetic of course, but honestly for me this is very ugly. The line work is
wobbly and spidery and those spirally curls are certainly not doing it for me.
Edward VII is hardly an improvement. It's practically impossible to read because the E
and R are just fighting so hard with one another. That said this design makes a lot more sense when
it's not reduced to a flattened two dimensional form. It works rather well as this over the top
ornament on the gates of Buckingham Palace, but in this more mundane form, not so much.
There's very little to say about George V's post box cypher, but this more obscure postmark version
has a lot of charm. That we'll actually talk about when we get to the next George, but between them
Edward VIII had a very short reign, so I'll keep it short: his cypher looks like the masthead
from Mad Magazine. You can see the influence of the previous George in the cypher of George VI,
but the lovely symmetry of the bowl of the R and G is lost to add this superfluous loop
and the parallel angles of the stems are also gone, so overall nice but not great.
So that's how Charles compares to his predecessors, but how about his contemporaries?
European monarchies are largely ceremonial at this point, but they retain a lot of the trappings and
symbols of tradition. Everyone still uses some form of monogram or cypher. There are a total
of five kings in Europe, excluding Charles and one queen. So let's begin with the Scandinavian
kingdoms, which account for half of these. Starting with Denmark and the group's only queen,
Margrethe II. Now this is what I call a monogram. The M, Arabic (not Roman) numeral 2, and the R all
fit together very well and the balance of space is perfect. It's like a magnificent regal octopus and
with its petal-like delicate design, the stylized crown is rendered fantastically also. As a Swede,
it's difficult for me to admit, but this might be the strongest of the bunch.
Speaking of which, Sweden's king, Carl XVI Gustav, has a very respectable monogram, much more paired
back compared with the ostentatious flourishing of the Danes, very "lagom", but not without its
charm. The way that the Roman numeral tucks neatly under the G's extended beard is very satisfying.
Then there's King Harald V of Norway, who has a very modern design for both the crown
and the monogram. The H is very distinctive with its tapered, straight hourglass-like stems and
high crossbar bearing the Arabic numeral 5. The crown matches the monogram style
with more stylized squareer forms than the other crowns. Scandinavian countries have a proud design
tradition and these three cyphers are all strongly graphic, working particularly well in print.
The other three kingdoms are somewhat different because their monograms are
used less frequently in public and are more often found in embroidered form.
Starting with Belgium's King Philippe, his monogram is shaped like two crossed swords
with the letters F and P, both standing for the name Philippe,
but one for the Dutch spelling and one for French. Then there's the Dutch King Willem-Alexander,
who has a very unusual monogram. The letter forms are hefty and elaborate with exaggerated
Tuscan serifs and this central loop. It also needs two layers to work, which is certainly
quirky. It kind of looks like an A wearing cowboy boots, waving its arms over its head.
Finally we have King Felipe VI of Spain, whose crest looks like it belongs in the back of a
leather motorcycle jacket. The lettering style is completely wild. It's also unusual
for the Roman numerals being the same size and weight as the rest of the cypher. Quite odd.
What I didn't touch on here are the so-called dual cyphers where royal couples have a monogram
combining the letters of both of their names. It's a popular way to sign off Christmas cards
from the royal family or for royal anniversary celebrations. However no cypher design for the
Queen consort, Camilla or the British royal couple have been released for now.
Considering just how widely used it will be not only in Britain but around the Commonwealth over
the years ahead, I think that King Charles's cypher is a very well designed example.
These symbols are part of a long held tradition, but good design is always truly timeless.
Thank you for watching. I hope that you learned something and feel free to check out my course
over on Tuts+. Big thanks to our sponsor Envato Elements and my wonderful patrons on Pateron.
If you want more royal design deconstruction, check out this video where it's Queen vs Queen in
the challenge of whose crest is best. My name is Linus and I hope I'll see you in a future video.