Are you brand aware?

Brand logos are the visual identity of a company. The average person is subjected to over 5,000 logos and messages every day. Look around you at the moment. How many brands do you see? How many brand icons do you see that are instantly recognisable, even without the brand name? Think of the Nike ‘swoosh’ & you instantly think of sportswear. There are many different aspects of branding, but you know your logo is doing well when its instantly recognisable. Here we look at the top ten most iconic logos of all time.

1. McDonald’s

The famous McDonald’s yellow ‘M’ symbol or the Golden Arches was inspired by the architecture of Stanley Clark Meston who was hired to remodel the original restaurant based in San Bernardino in the US. The McDonald brothers hired a sign-maker, George Dexter to incorporate two giant yellow arches on the side of the building. When viewed at an angle, these arches resembled the letter ‘M’. The ‘M’ was finally added to the corporate logo design of McDonald’s in 1961 when Ray Kroc acquired the company. The logo has been through several iterations since then, but the yellow ‘M’ is still instantly recognisable all around the world.

2. Apple

The original Apple logo featured an image of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. This however was short lived as the CEO Steve Jobs hired graphic designer Rob Janoff in 1976 to create a more contemporary logo that could be used for their products. The result was the Apple icon we know today. The iconic ‘bite’ was incorporated into the design so that it looked more like an apple than a cherry. Also, it was considered to be a play on words; bite / byte

3. Coca Cola

One of the world’s most iconic logos was created in 1887 by the founder of Coca Cola’s bookkeeper Frank M Robinson who suggested that ‘the two C’s would look well in advertising’. Using a Spencerian script which was a characteristic form of writing at the time, he went on to design this iconic logo which is still used today.

4. Nike

The Nike logo was designed in 1971 by a graphic design student called Carolyn Davidson. Known as the ‘Swoosh’ it refers to the fibres that were used in Nike running shoes at this time. Davidson was paid just $35 for creating one of the most recognisable icons in the world.

5. Pepsi

Pepsi, which had its origins in 1893 initially had a red swirly logo which was compared at the time to their main rival Coca Cola. This logo carried on until 1943 when the word Pepsi Cola was split with a red colour band above the logo and a blue one beneath. The word Cola was dropped in 1962, but it was not until 1991 when the word Pepsi was separated from its familiar red and white circle icon. Today, the logo is instantly recognisable either by the word Pepsi with circle icon, or the circle icon on its own.

6. Google

Google is a misspelling of ‘googol’ – a Latin term that means 10 to the 100th power (or 1 followed by a 100 zeros). The first Google logo was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996. This logo featured an exclamation mark, added purely because Yahoo’s logo included the same. Between 1999 and 2010 Ruth Kedar worked on the logo making it simpler in form and losing the exclamation mark. In 2015 the logo was redesigned again following a weeklong sprint in New York resulting in the simple sans-serif design we all recognise today.

7. FedEx

FedEx was founded in 1971 and was known as Federal Express. By 1991, it had become a household name, but was a bit of a mouthful. The CEO Fred Smith agreed to abbreviate the logo to FedEx. In 1994, the present-day logo was created by Lindon Leader. An interesting fact was that Lindon noticed an interesting piece of negative space created between the ‘E’ and the ‘x’ which looked like an arrow, an apt symbol for a courier company. This is how one of the most successful and subliminal logos was created.

8. Walt Disney

The original Walt Disney logo was introduced in 1924 following the founding of the Disney Bros. Studio. The logo evolved with various iterations including the Mickey Mouse character until eventually Walt Disney’s iconic signature was introduced to the logo. In 1986 it became the Walt Disney Company and finally in 1995 it introduced the Cinderella Castle background with the arcing line overhead, with a redesign in 2006 resulting in the logo we see today.

9. Shell

The words ‘Shell’ first appeared in 1891 as the trademark for kerosene being shipped to the Far East by Marcus Samuel and Company. By 1904 a Pecten seashell was introduced which has remained part of the company logo to this day. The red and yellow colour links back to when Shell introduced its first service stations in California in 1915. Due to the state’s strong Spanish connections, the red and yellow colours of Spain were chosen. The word Shell was positioned below the Pectin icon in 1971, and in 1999 the word ‘Shell’ was removed altogether as a standalone mark which is identifiable all around the world.

10. 3M

Formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, 3M’s logo was first introduced in 1906 where it went through numerous iterations until 1978 when the design firm Siegel and Gale introduced the classic yet simple logo that we all recognise today.