The artist who created the Best Buddies logo made it a symbol of support, kindness, and universal love. In a simple drawing, they reflected the values and mission of the charity organization that helps people socialize. Thus, the emblem conveys the concept of mutual aid and friendship.
Best Buddies: Brand overview
Meaning and History
The Best Buddies logo has been in use since the organization’s launch but was created a bit earlier, in 1988. Keith Haring, whose artistic journey began with drawings on vacant advertising panels in the New York City subway, designed it. The American artist’s style, inspired by graffiti art developing outside museums and galleries, is characterized by simple geometric shapes, abstract motifs, and bright colors without gradients. Almost all his images contain broad black lines forming silhouettes of people and animals and short dashes representing glow or movement.
Keith Haring decided to make his art public, so his murals have adorned buildings in various cities around the world. Many artworks were donated to shelters, kindergartens, and hospitals. The Best Buddies emblem was also created for free. It became a powerful marketing tool, as the little-known charitable organization gained fame using a drawing by a popular artist. It was one of Haring’s last works before he died of AIDS in 1990.
What is Best Buddies?
Best Buddies is an international charity organization. It assists people with intellectual disabilities in finding friends, socializing, obtaining education, and employment. Its main headquarters is located in the City of Miami, with branches in various educational institutions worldwide. Activist Anthony Kennedy Shriver, a relative of former U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, initiated the project.
1989 – today
Keith Haring created the Best Buddies emblem in his typical pop-art style. He depicted the embrace of two people who, like the characters in his other paintings, are without race or gender. These anonymous figures represent humanity as a whole. Outlined with bold black lines and painted in positive colors: the left silhouette in yellow, the right in orange. Above them are short lines conveying emotions of joy, warmth, acceptance, and compassion.
The emblem symbolizes universal love – a quality important to the organization that helps people with intellectual disabilities find friends. Haring emphasized the importance of relationships, focusing on people and depicting a very simple background behind them, featuring a blue sky and lilac earth. The drawing is placed in a square with the inscription “BEST BUDDIES.”
Font and Colors
Keith Haring himself created the lettering for the logo, so the letters are hand-drawn and have an individual shape. The artist made them uppercase to highlight the organization’s name. He also carefully chose the color palette in the pop-art style, combining muted shades of yellow, orange, lilac, and blue. The outlines, in turn, are traced with bold black lines.