Guide
Turning a brand icon into a sculpture
D’Argenta has turned the icons of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, Kellogg’s and M&M’S into sculpture. The good ones share a handful of decisions made early. Here they are, in order.
1. Logo, mascot or product?
A logo piece is formal and timeless: right for boards, partners and long service. A mascot is warm and full of character: right for teams, sales clubs and celebrations. A product — a bottle, a jar, the fries — is the most surprising of the three, because people have never seen it treated as precious.
2. Who approves
If the icon is yours, your brand team approves the drawings and the prototype. If it belongs to a licensor, their approval governs every reference to the mark. Either way, decide who signs off before the first drawing, and the project runs smoothly.
3. Colour becomes metal
Sculpture in metal carries no paint, so the brand’s colours are translated into finishes. Gold goes where the brand is golden or where the eye must land first; silver carries the rest; copper adds warmth. McDonald’s fries are gold in a silver carton; the M&M’S Liberty is silver with a gold crown on a copper pedestal.
4. Size, base and edition
Decide where the piece will live — a desk, a shelf, a lobby — and size it for that place. Decide the base: black is the usual choice, because it lets the metal read as an object. And decide whether the piece is a one-off, a run for a programme, or a numbered edition with a fixed size.
5. Timing
A very simple piece takes about a week; a complex one about a month, plus the time your approvals take. You review a prototype before anything is committed, and there is no minimum order.
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Closures, bottles, emblems and brand icons, finished by hand in silver, 24-karat gold and copper in Mexico City. A prototype is ready for your review before anything is committed.