Logo Tales
A great company founded by a great inventor! Thomas Alva Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878 to manufacture and sell his new invention - incandescent electric lamp. Later Edison combined all his businesses under Edison General Electric Company that merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 to form the General Electric Company.
Old GE Logos:
Current logo was adopted in 2004 when GE also changed its corporate color. The new logo was designed by Wolff Olins. GE also adopted a new slogan, “imagination at work” replacing the longtime slogan “we bring good things to life”.
Anybody who is somewhat familiar with the world of business and stock market will recognize this logo instantly. A raging bull makes for a perfect logo for a company that is “bullish on America”. Charles E Merrill & Co. was founded by Charles Merrill on January 6, 1914. Soon Edmund Lynch joined the company and it became became Merrill, Lynch & Co. Today Merrill Lynch is one of the iconic names on the Wall Street.
The existing logo of the company was adopted in 1974. The logo was designed by King Casey Designs for Marketing, Inc. (now King-Casey Inc). Three years earlier, the company had come up with a marketing campaign “Merrill Lynch is bullish on America” during a baseball World Series. So the designers might have derived the inspiration from that campaign.
The bull in the logo has its tail up and is ready for a charge with a bent front leg. It is holding it’s head high thus it symbolizes growth, strength, optimism and confidence.
What started out as AuctionWeb as a section of a programmer’s homepage became world’s largest online marketplace. The primary colored overlapping logo of eBay stands for what the company is all about.
eBay started out as AuctionWeb on September 3, 1995 and the first logo was indicative of it’s humble beginnings. The boxy black and white logo with a white to black gradient bar was known as the “Death Bar” by early eBay staffers.
By September 1997, AuctionWeb officially became eBay but it had no logo! The homepage just contained the name eBay in big black block letters. This was to change pretty soon and for good.
eBay roped in Silicon Valley’s renowned branding expert Bill Cleary of CKS Group to assist them in branding and redesigning of the website and logo. CKS designed several logos and the current eBay logo was eventually selected. Each aspect of the logo conveys a distinct message that describes the company’s values.
The primary colors of the logo depict fun, excitement and childlike energy. The overlapping letters of the logo are suggestive of the bonding within the eBay user community. The letters are not on the same level, they have what graphic artists call “baseline shift”. It gives the logo an offbeat feel and shows that company is not averse to change and that its a dynamic company that is always evolving. The unusual capitalization of the letters also shows that company accepts change when it is for good. Letter B is not capitalized in the logo even though the name of the company is written as eBay. Designers at CKS thought a capital B would look like a roadblock in the middle of the logo so they capitalized letter Y instead.
Logos should reflect the personality of the company and to some extent of the founders. Bill Cleary described the logo as being “friendly, open, accessible and having a little bit of the pony-tail about it”.
Coca-Cola’s logo is perhaps the world’s most famous and most recognized brand icon. It is a logo that has not changed ever since it was created.
Coca-Cola was invented by a pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton on May 8, 1886. His bookkeeper and partner Frank M. Robinson suggested the name Coca-Cola and also came up with the now famous flowing logo in Red Spencerian script. Frank also invented the very first tag line of the new drink - “Delicious and Refreshing”. Frank happened to be the publicity director of the fledging soda drink company at that time and he though two Cs would look good in advertising.
Trivia: Did you ever notice there was a hyphen (-) between the words Coca and Cola in the logo and in the name? It’s a part of the registered trademark and one should always use it when referring to Coca-Cola!
Everybody recognizes the golden arches of the McDonalds. This logo is so simple yet so elegant! Generally no designer would use the combination of red and yellow in a logo. But McDonalds is an exception. Here the red and yellow complement each other.
The arches signify a shelter under which you can get a refuge. A safe place to have your break and eat. Over the years, the golden arches have become a symbol of capitalism and Americanism.
The three stripes of Adidas can be seen everywhere. They are on the shoes, they are on the jerseys of your favorite football team, they are on T-shirts, and on many more things. Adolf-Adi-Dassler founded Adidas in 1949 in Herzogenaurach, Germany along with his brother Rudolf (Who later founded rival sportswear maker Puma). The three stripes logo was created by Adi Dassler himself. Since then the stripes have become a symbol of comfort, durability and toughness.
The three stripes which are shaped like mountain signify the challenges faced by the athletes. Chances are that it was inspired by the side view of a shoe with a lace. The triangular shape of the logo looks like a shoe while the white space between stripes may signify shoelace.
Today the company has three different versions of the logo for its three different businesses. The Modern Performance logo, The Classic Trefoil logo and the Y-3 logo.
Michelin’s Tire-Man is probably one of the best known company mascots around the world. It is not just a logo but a persona. The cute fat man has been used in all forms of promotional activities and branding by Michelin since 1898.
Over the time the number of tires in his body and their types have been changed to keep up with the latest trend in the tire industry. Bibendum has become slimmer and cuter with the passage of time. The first logo that O’Galop designed consisted of bicycle tires, he wore glasses and smoked a cigar. By the 1980s Bibendum was being shown as running instead of just standing.
The present day slimmed down version was unveiled in 1998 on his 100th anniversary. A slim trim Michelin Man reflects today’s hi-tech but small tires and depicts athleticism, speed and strength.
This signature like logo of Virgin group can be compared with the personality traits of Richard Branson - founder of Virgin group with interests in airlines, space travel, colas, mobiles, hotels and much more. The way it rises from left to right, it signifies, progress and upward movement. This is evident from Virgin group’s rise from a record label to a space travel organizer.
The logo was designed by designer Ray Kyte in the early 1970s. Branson mentions the logo in his autobiography as being his personal endorsement with the “V” forming an expressive tick.
Trivia: When Branson was brainstorming for a name with his collegues, one girl suggested Virgin because they all were new to the business - kind of virgins. Branson liked the name. Another name that branson liked was “Slipped Disk“!
Any takers for Slipped Disk Airlines, or Slipped Disk Mobile?
The logo of IBM - International Business Machines - the “big blue” company is widely recognized across the world. The logo stands for innovation, speed, dynamism and the technological prowess of the company.
There are total of eight equally spaced stripes in the logo. Many people believe that stripes signify the scan lines on a TV or computer monitor’s screen implying the state of the art technology of the company. However Rand said that he made the striped version just because stripes get noticed. He was probably right because a lot of companies in the 70s and 80s imitated the IBM logo and added stripes to their own logos.
Trivia: Since there are eight stripes in the logo, some suggest they stand for eight bits that make up a byte.
You can’t have any other object as a logo for this company but an apple.
There are three theories about why the name Apple was chosen. One is that Apple was Steve Jobs’ favorite fruit and since the founders couldn’t think of any other name so the company was named Apple Computers. Second is that they wanted their company to be listed ahead of Atari in the phone directory and third and less known possibility is that it was a tribute to Apple Records(Apple Corps Ltd), the music label of the Beatles. Whatever be the reason the name Apple was selected.
Very first Apple logo was created by Ron Wayne, co-founder of Apple. It was an image of Isaac Newton sitting under the the famous Apple tree thinking about gravity. So there’s a distant possibility that founders actually wanted to convey this particular message that an Apple leads to a great discovery or to great ideas.
But since this logo was more of a photograph than a logo so in 1977 designer Rob Janoff designed the new logo - an apple with a bite taken off it. The bite symbolizes a lot of things. The apple can mean an apple from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden which attracted Adam and Eve. So the logo with the bite symbolized lust for knowledge. The bite also sounds like byte - a collection of eight bits that makes up a single character in computer lexicon. The logo had rainbow colors but in a reverse order. That also probably comes form the Garden of Eden.
PS: Apple Inc. and Apple Corps Ltd. (Beatles) have been fighting over the trademark ever since the name was chosen for the computer company. Beatles have sued Apple number of times and they have reached out of court settlements with Apple Inc paying huge amount to Beatles to use the name on their products!
source:logotales
No comments:
Post a Comment