Logos in Global Summitry

Abstract

The study of international relations (IR) has undergone an ‘aesthetic turn’, placing previously marginalized visual evidence at the heart of our understanding of IR. Although researchers have embraced both moving and still images as evidence, the existing literature has almost entirely overlooked logos. This article extends this analysis by focussing on the case of one of the central mechanisms of global governance: the summit meetings of the Group of 7 (G7). We argue that the creation of annual G7 logos has become an important practice in summitry constituting a means by which this informal governance group has sought to institutionalize itself, while concurrently providing an opportunity for each year’s host to engage in nation branding. The practice of ‘logo-ing’ has become a central component of summitry that serves a performative function in the simultaneous communication of multiple identities. We thus advance the position that what is salient about global summitry is more than what is discussed in meetings or published in communiqués, but critically includes the aesthetic, performative, and practical.