My second logo. It took almost two years to get started on it, but the intervals were meant to decrease rapidly. BLAST 94 was a cruise designed to measure methyl bromide, a bromine containing, ozone-depleting, natural compound, hence the name Bromine Latitudinal Air Sea Transect. I guess I left quite an impression when I (as a German and non-native speaker) came up with 18 different possible acronyms for this mission. Keeping my experience with the first cruise on the ship from hell in mind, I had such great names as Volatile Organic Methylbromide Interchange Transect (VOMIT) or the Bromine/Atmosphere Release Field experiment (BARF) or the Pacific Underway Knowledge Endeveavor (PUKE). But not all of them were this bad, the Sea/Air Interchange: a Latitudinal Oceanic Research program (SAILOR) was a strong contender along with the Bromine Ocean Atmosphere Transect (BOAT). We settled on "BLAST", because it has two more meanings besides the acronym: a wind blast and the fun blast that we actually ended up having.
The logo shows the globe, centered on the Pacific where the actual cruise track is visible. The methyl bromide molecule is shown as an orbital model and in this logo, I introduced Elsethea, the sea-serpent. Elsethea reappeared in the next two ocean logos as well and was the basic idea of having some sort of animal in my logos. A few more subtleties here than in the OAXTC logo: more color blends, an envelope shape on the acronym and a shadow for the serpent. Oh, yes: I don't know why, but there must be a reason that I picked a female name for the serpent (Just kidding, it's actually a figure from an album by the Mandalaband, a conglomerate of many musicians such as 10cc, Barclay James Harvest, Maddy Prior etc., who published a fantastic album that described a fantasy-land with knights, witches, sorcerers, and serpents. Great Album, it's available on CD). Some more info on the cruise: click here and select the BLAST 94 homepage. By the way: This cruise was meant to be the only one of its kind, but we ended up doing three of them. That's why the first cruise was named BLAST 94 instead of BLAST I, but we decided to keep the name, because it's in the logo. However, we also refer to this first cruise as BLAST I or BLAST 1, a little inconsistent, I know.
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