Tintin Forums

Thanks to a tip from a listener to the radio interview I did yesterday, The Helicopter Museum (from their base in Weston-super-Mare) have very kindly provided pictures of a Bell 47H-1in their collection, used by the 1957-58 Belgian Antarctic Expedition, and bearing a logo designed by Hergé.
Known for commercial and graphic art outside of the cartoon field in the early part of his career, this must be one of the latest public designs I know of which doesn't feature Tintin, Snowy, or one of his cartoon creations, so is a very interesting thing to see.
Thank you to Elfan Ap Rees for the information, and to the Museum for responding so quickly to enquiries!

That is interesting. I recall seeing this logo in the book, Hergé and Tintin - Reporters. If I'm remembering rightly (I don't have the book quite to hand) it's maybe shown there in pencil sketch form at the edge/bottom of a Tintin pencil layout, though possibly I'm muddling it up with something else in that book. Anyway, nice to see it as it was actually used.

You touch your marble! Just came across a photo of the logo in the aforementioned volume - it's shown as the enamel lapel-badge worn by expedition members, and can be seen on page 50.
Again, doffing of the chapeau to m'learned friend! The original design-sketch appears in the margin of a page of Tintin in Tibet rough pencil art, found on page 130 (of Hergé and Tintin - Reporters, of course - the pencil art is for what became page 14).

Hergé and Tintin - Reporters continues to fascinate and infuriate me in equal measure, which is possibly one of the reasons it has taken me until now to check it and see where the logo was to be found.
The content is a gold-mine for Tintin-fans, packed chock-full as it is of art and photos from every stage of Hergé's life and career; however the lay-out and design are atrocious!

It can be head-ache inducing to try and work-out which caption (if any) relates to what image; the order in which material is included is haphazard, and there's no index.

The caption for the badge tells you that the design is in the margin of Tintin in Tibet, but doesn't mention that that page of art is included in the book, nor does it display them together, which would seem to me to be the obvious solution.

But, having now located both, I will put it back on the shelf for another seven years, to allow my brain to cool down...! (Here endeth the grumble!)

Yes, I agree Hergé and Tintin - Reporters is something of a randomly ordered scrapbook, but as you say, chock-full of lovely and interesting bits of Hergé's artwork, such as those multiple pages of Tintin in Tibet pencil drafts. When it was first published, there was so much less available in English about Hergé and the background to his work than there is now and I pored over the book avidly, and still dip into it for an unstructured browse from time to time!

Just managed to scatch another mental itch...
The reference to Hergé sketching the logo on a piece of artwork seemed familiar, but looking it up, it hadn't rung a bell.
Then I remebered that it might have been in the Chronologies, and lo and behold, there it was.
There's a page of pencil sketches for what became page 44 of Red Sea Sharks, and there the logo and the pennant can be found - albeit that they seem to be upside down, with the bulls-eye at the top (maybe he was just standing on his head when he derw it...?).
If done contemporaneously with the initial run of the story this pushes back the work on the design to 1956.
The Tintin.com website has pictures of a snow-mobile which uses a later variant of the design, when a combined Dutch/ Belgian mission used a version with the colours of the Ductch flaf added to the "bullseye".