While reading about logos I became interested in the importance of them. I decided to test out a hypothesis I had on these logos. I have a grandson who has not yet mastered the skills needed to interpret words. With that I decided to bring up a number of corporate logos to see if he would be able to identify the company. Well he got them all. However, I felt that logos such as McDonalds were fairly easy because the McDonald signs are ubiquitous throughout New York and he has been to McDonalds and can easily associate the sign with the name McDonalds.
I made sure all these logos had words in the logo design.
However, the Walt Disney surprised me, I showed him the Logo for the Walt Disney Company which was simply text with a unique font type. He was able to interpret this logo as Disney World. I became immediately aware of the power of logos and their affect on us at the earliest age.
“Their respective simple yet powerful logos, for example, are identifiable everywhere in the world and serve as a kind of "crown jewel" and an instantly identifiable evocative symbol for each brand. Reference : http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2006/06/visual_design_a.html”
Hi Kev,
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting observation! Even though there is no visual image elements to the Disney logo, the particular font used helps viewers decipher the brand. I'm sure your grandson probably watches a lot of shows where the Disney logo flashes in the credits and has become ingrained in his mind. I found this posting on the most effective text-based logos when doing research:
http://www.livingondividends.com/articles/text-based-logos
Chris Roth
Additionally, it is interesting enough to notice that the McDonald's logo uses a mellow color for the main symbol the "M" and a primary color for the background.
ReplyDeleteAs humans, our eyes are instinctively set to be observant of unusual objects. Take for example the Walt Disney logo. The words "The" and "Company" are plainly written and the "Walt Disney" is in a different font. This tip helps viewers automatically focus our attention to that. That's very powerful.
I did some more digging on logos and was surprised to find that over time company logos change, but not to dramatically. I noticed while the art behind many corporate logos may change over time the basic colors and type seems to remain in many of the logos. I noticed this with McDonalds, Burger King and even tech giants such as IBM. The evolution of several corporate logos has been more dramatic such as the first Apple computer logo and their current logo. However, for many companies the change seems subtle.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post! It's amazing how just seeing a tiny part of a company's logo people are able to identify the company. Our professor gave us a few examples in his presentation on logos and I found it pretty neat.
ReplyDelete