How is the Karün logo born?

8 years ago, in2012,Karün was born as a company, defying the laws that so far delimit companies.

This different kind of company was born to redefine the way we operate, and demonstrate - with concrete examples - that a company can live in harmony with nature, as indigenous communities have been doing for thousands of years.
 

This way of thinking was transferred into the name and icon that would represent this company, so in order to synthesize their feelings, honour the wisdom of the indigenous communities and echo their way of living, this company decided to name itselfKarün, choosing a Mapuche word and the reinterpretation of a Mapuche symbol in its logo,so that it would denote the appreciation that this human group has for ancestral knowledge.

How was the name and logo built?
Hand in hand with a foundation called “Fundación Memoria Azul” or Blue Memory Foundation. Ther have worked with different Mapuche leaders for many years.

Read story here.

Present thoughts and questions

Today, 8 years after the gestation of the brand, we look at our history with pride, with humility and with happiness at all the advancements that we have been building in order to, step by step, create a different company; from cultural appreciation; with nature and collaborative work at its core; with concrete advances in using our platform as a means to regenerate local economies and inspire more people to reflect.

Some milestones that we believe are relevant to make visible in this context:

- To work hand in hand with rural communities to make each other stronger against possible external threats and to contribute to the protection of Patagonia through their community. Today we have a commitment to Cochamó of approximately 1 million dollars and 4 years of work (starting
 019) and we are adding the town of Capitán Prat (Aysén) to the commitment so that we can start working together from 2021.

- We moved the base our head quarters to the region, to contribute in the decentralization of Chile and to be closer to the rural communities that inspire us and with which we work.

- Work the culture of the company to ensure that in its growing we maintain contact with our roots and understand from humility how much we have to learn to continue improving our processes and apply rural and ancestral knowledge from the collective of our organization and also from the individuality of all those who make up the organization. To do this we have training programmes in nature, with the rural community that makes our commitment a reality; we have mapudungun classes for the whole company twice a month (Patricio, our teacher, wrote about us in a story he published on LinkedIn here); we set up an orchard to link us with nature from its base - our food - and other related projects.

Today, under these thoughts, we see the opportunity to refresh our logo to create our own symbol that represents us as a group. As our manifesto says:

"We are the new inhabitants of this land.Inhabitants who care for the environment and the human being. People who believe that to be a company, to set trends and impose fashion, it is not necessary to lose humanity or the desire to dream.People who know no borders but who are proud of the land where they were born.

In Karün we believe in our youth and in our ancestors, in our environment, in the earth, in the forests, in sustainability, in fair trade, in respect, in the quality and beauty of things.

In the language of the earth... We are nature: We are Karün.”

Changes to be generated and rational

KARÜN as a word
It is to make use of a language. We could use the language of the Spanish or the Mapuche. We feel honoured and aligned by using the language of the people who inhabited these lands before the arrival of the Spanish. We do not see a major problem with the word from its language, as many words and names of places we use as Chileans are in Mapudungun, such as Llanquihue, Cochamó, merkén, etc..

"We must use the language more. Karün can become a key player in revitalizing the Mapuche language, which is neither dead nor forgotten  - Patricio Bello, Mapudungun teacher.

Reinterpretation of the cultrun

Our reinterpretation of the Mapuche cultrun, we believe, was very close to the sacred cultrun of the people. This is a problem because of the potential risk that our use will generate a disassociation of the real symbol from its meaning for the people, in a context and space very different from that of the origin.

DECISION: We will change our isotype and with it our logo that integrates the word and the isotype.

New rational for the construction of the symbol

We want the impulse we have as a group of people to become a bridge between the degenerative way of doing business and the regenerative way; between the ancestral and the modern; between the most mature and the newest generations; between the human being and all the biodiversity with which we share this land.

Our new rational goes like this:
"Nature integrates everything, and is formed by polarized forces; like the ancestral and the modern, the degenerative conception of doing business and the regenerative, the emotional and the rational, etc.

These forces are usually conceived as divided. We want to become the bridge that finds the spaces where these forces meet. Smoothing the lines that divide us under the reflection that we are all nature: Karün".

Applying design to the story

Result

We believe that our generation has the responsibility to recognize the differences that have divided us in the past and from that recognition, begin to build a new reality. A reality that seeks encounters,

that is built from empathy, collaboration and a sense of community (community-unity). As a generation we must build new symbols that represent our unity with ourselves and of us with nature.

We invite you to look at the world from different points of view.

Introduction/Summary: We believe in the habit of reflecting and the actions that are triggered by opening up to processes of feedback, learning and self-criticism. Here we tell you the story of our logo, the opportunities to refresh it in order to represent our feeling and the result that welcomes our new logo.