The Marshall Review

Every publication eventually acquires its own odd little customs. Some have house styles. Some have mission statements. Some have logos carefully developed by consultants after lengthy meetings involving flipcharts and expensive biscuits.

I was once present at a meeting in a Random House imprint devoted almost entirely to the colour of the spine of one of my books. I had arrived with what seemed to me a perfectly reasonable vision involving shades of green. Around the table, opinions were offered, alternatives proposed and possibilities weighed.

Eventually the chairman arrived, somewhat late. He listened to the discussion for a moment before announcing that he had just come from visiting bookshops. “I've been looking at books on shelves,” he said. “It has to be red.” That was the end of the matter. The book acquired a red spine.

The Marshall publications have accumulated something rather different. Over the years, a simple mark began appearing on documents, websites, notebooks and drafts. Nothing elaborate. Just a small visual signature. A reminder that a piece of work had passed through my hands on its way into the world. The mark had deeper roots than I first realised. For many years I carried a well-thumbed James Hill Teeline shorthand textbook. Journalists of a certain generation will know the book. It travelled everywhere with me, surviving trains, coffee shops, newsrooms and countless notebooks. Somewhere along the way, my initials, DM, found their way into Teeline notation. Not formally, perhaps, and certainly not in a form that would satisfy every shorthand purist, but in a stylised version that evolved through repeated use in margins, notes and drafts.

The result was a simple graphic mark. At some point, the mark acquired a name. The Sig.

The Sig was never intended to be a logo. It simply emerged, much as many useful things do. A line here, a flourish there, until eventually it became recognisable. But every mark contains a hidden possibility. What if it were alive? Somewhere between a Teeline textbook, a notebook, a cup of coffee and far too much thinking about matters that probably should not be thought about, the Sig acquired a second identity: Sigi. Not a mascot exactly. Not a logo. More an occasional visitor.

The Sig is the mark. Sigi is what happens when the mark decides to step out for a stroll.

There is another distinction worth noting. The Sig is a mark. Marks tend to live in the centre of things. They certify documents, identify owners and announce conclusions. Sigi appears to prefer the margins. In fact, among the scattered fragments that make up what passes for Sigi scholarship, one principle appears more frequently than any other: Sigi's Rule #1: There is always something happening in the margins. The rule applies surprisingly often. The important conversation happens after the meeting ends. The revealing detail lurks in the footnote. The unfinished notebook entry occasionally proves more interesting than the polished report.

Looking back, I now suspect Sigi had little interest in becoming a logo. What he wanted was residency in the spaces between ideas. Readers seeking a fuller account of these matters will find that an unexpectedly large body of research has accumulated at sigi.ie, (https://sigi.ie), although its reliability remains a matter of ongoing debate.

Like all respectable characters, Sigi possesses a somewhat uncertain origin story. He may have escaped from the pages of that old shorthand textbook. He may have wandered out of the margin of a policy briefing. He may simply be what happens when a writer spends too much time alone with half-finished ideas.

I have other suspicions. Back in 1992, I wrote a piece about the proposed development of Euro Disney, as Disneyland Paris was then becoming known. One of the controversies of the day concerned facial hair. Disney reportedly discouraged moustaches among employees at a time when moustaches were rather more popular in France than they seemed to be in corporate America.

Looking back now, I am almost certain I saw Sigi for the first time. As I worked on the article, a small shape appeared to slide from the side of the page. It paused for a moment, examined a photograph of Walt Disney, and then repositioned itself directly beneath the nose and above the upper lip. There it remained. A moustache. Entirely innocent, of course. At least that was Sigi's version of events. Looking back, I suspect that was the moment I first realised that Sigi possessed a sense of humour.

There remains, however, one unresolved question in Sigi scholarship. The question is not where he came from. The question is how he entered the machine. For years, Sigi's existence appeared confined to paper. He inhabited notebooks, manuscript margins, shorthand exercises and the occasional photograph of unsuspecting individuals who suddenly found themselves sporting entirely unauthorised moustaches.

Then something changed. I can date the event with unusual precision. It was 3 April 2003. The location was one of the early Fujitsu Siemens Tablet PCs running Microsoft's pioneering tablet software. These devices now belong to a curious chapter in computing history. They arrived years before the world was ready for them and were often regarded as interesting but impractical experiments. I know better. Because Sigi was there.

I remember catching sight of him among the pages of a Stephen Covey planning application. Not openly. More a suggestion than an appearance. A familiar shape beneath glass where previously it had existed only on paper. From that moment onwards, the migration appears to have accelerated.

A year or so later, he was occasionally glimpsed hiding inside early beta versions of Microsoft OneNote. Sigi has never been one for grand entrances. He simply appeared in digital notebooks much as he had once occupied paper ones, settling comfortably into margins and waiting patiently for an opportunity to make himself useful. How he made the crossing remains uncertain. Perhaps he travelled through a stylus. Perhaps he slipped through a handwritten note. Perhaps he was carried across by one of those early synchronisation processes that connected paper habits to digital worlds. Sigi himself remains characteristically unhelpful on the matter. Asked directly, he merely points out that paper and screens have always been less different than people imagine.

Nobody can say for certain. The official history maintains that Sigi originated in a shorthand textbook, acquired a name somewhere in the 1990s and crossed into the digital world in 2003. That account is neat, orderly and almost certainly incomplete.

The alternative possibility is that Sigi was always there. That he merely borrowed the Teeline mark as a convenient disguise. That notebooks, computer screens and policy papers are simply the places where he occasionally chooses to reveal himself. Historians of Sigi remain divided on the matter.

What is known is that he now accompanies the growing family of Marshall projects. Marshall on Policy provides analysis, briefings and commentary on public affairs. The Marshall Review collects essays, reflections and observations. And somewhere nearby, usually just outside the field of vision, Sigi continues his quiet wanderings.

From time to time he may appear as a sketch, an animation or an unexpected observation. He should not be encouraged. Experience suggests this only makes him worse. Still, the world contains enough certainty, enough outrage and enough people determined to explain everything. A little curiosity seems no bad thing.

And perhaps that is Sigi's purpose. Not to explain the world. Simply to remind us that there is always something happening in the margins (rule #1).

Looking back, I suspect he had been waiting there all along. It simply took me a very long time to notice.

David Marshall The Marshall Review Marked with the Sig. ✒️