A few months ago we submitted a coat of arms design and we just received positive news from the Flemish Heraldic Council! Next year, our studios’ Coat of Arms will be revealed during an official granting ceremony in Brussels, and we can’t wait to show you the result. 

We feel heraldry is fun, fascinating and imaginative, and that's what we are all about at LuGus Studios, and yet…

Heraldry has problems

If heraldry had a smell it would surely be cologne. It's often seen as old-fashioned, boring and snobbish! In 2019 I was granted my own coat of arms, and when I display it, I can hear the sound of hundreds of eyeballs rolling  “look at this guy!”. Displaying arms is often perceived as something haughty, for the upper class. It doesn’t help that being a white bald dude with a beard, I fit the typical armiger cliché image. 

Ironically in the Low Countries where we are from, heraldry has historically always been available for everyone, nobility and commoners alike. That’s why in Belgium, even today every citizen (and company) has the right to get a grant of arms.

Even then, why risk our street rep? 

Because!

We love history, culture and art, and heraldry brings all these aspects together. It’s a fascinating form of self expression and one of the longest continuous forms of graphic design, another of our passions.

Moreso, heraldry is an age-old living visual tradition that has been practiced within our part of the world for over a thousand years; that fact alone is impressive. While heraldry has recently got a “+1 rep” thanks to pop-culture like Game of Thrones and The Elder Scrolls, we feel it does not receive the respect and fascination it really deserves. These days we take great care of protecting old buildings, saving our regional dialects, promoting cultural events and so forth, yet with heraldry we tend to be dismissive and destructive. It’s seen as perfectly acceptable to replace a centuries old heraldic image with a sterile minimalist logo. As a perfect example we implore you to look up the new logo of the self proclaimed “city of taste” Hasselt, that replaced the coat of arms it had been using as its logo for centuries.

And let's be honest, none of this is important, there's no real drama here… yet as fans of heraldry we feel compelled to provide a counter response.  There's almost no bigger contrast between an age-old tradition like heraldry and the modern concept of a game studio, and we feel that makes us the best possible ambassadors for the art form. If we can inspire just a few to explore it, we’d feel we succeeded in our goal. 
 

Show and tell! 

While we wait for the official reveal to happen next year, how about you show and tell us first?

We want to hear from you!  Do you have a coat of arms? Do you share our love for heraldry? Are you interested in becoming an arms bearer? Let us know, we are happy to help out!