By Adam Reeves
In Spring 2022 I'd been staying with Costantinos Pissourios at his remote, rustic eco-home in the Assinou Forest, Cyprus. We'd initially connected through a Facebook group for a legendary, but now defunct, reggae reissue label called Blood and Fire, where I'd put a shout-out to find an illustrator for my planned ska-themed graphic novel, Trombone Man: Ska's Fallen Genius. Now I was here, along with my partner Peta, in this incredible location, to have fun generating ideas and energy for the project. If we were going to work together for the next few years, we needed to meet up in person and make it real. One evening we were in the studio taking a publicity shot of the two of us standing together next to Costantinos' hand built reggae sound system. Pixel the puppy wandered into the shot and Peta instantly pointed out the similarity with the iconic His Master's Voice logo. Used by RCA Records and several other corporations, the original image was created in the featured a painting of a dog named Nipper looking down the speaker cone of early gramophone. Its probably one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of branding of all time. Peta suggested that the image could be the Hearsay Media logo. It seemed to make perfect sense: a reggae sound system twist on an old favourite. Costantinos got to work on the design and it was perfect for our purpose. It didn't need explaining, people would just get it straight away. I had a rubber stamp of it made up which I had fun stamping on the backs of all the envelopes when I shipped all the crowdfund reward bundles.
Sadly, Nipper only lived to the age of about eighteen months old, but he has become possibly the most famous dog of all time. You may not have known his name, but he's up there with Lassie, Toto and Rin Tin Tin. I'd love for our logo to gain this kind of traction, but I'll have to settle for just making people smile and selling a few more comics
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