You Know The Logo But Not The Meaning Behind It

Logo design may appear simple but have you ever wondered what makes companies invest so heavily? Today, succeeding in the business world is no more a child’s play, a world where nothing exists without logic, where every single move requires to be carried out with a proper and well-defined purpose. And a logo design is strongly considered as a business tool with phenomenal worth. Gone all the days when companies used their name as a brand. Nowadays, companies demand innovative, novel ways of portraying their brand name. And this can be done precisely after going through vigorous designing and redesigning stages.

Now I am sure you must have played the game ‘Guess the logo’ numerous times where one does not require to be a marketing nerd to play. Although, there were certain levels that forced some of us (including me) to seek help from Google but overall the Idea of stuffing the brand names in the mind of consumers was a grand success. So basically I don’t doubt on your logo vocabulary. The following post explores a few ingenious examples that carry hidden meanings in their design. The hidden symbols either the nature of the business or they might offer a clever visual representation of its name. So, check out how the web designers behind these logos seem to have nailed the art direction and execution.

1. Toyota

Most of the people tend to compare the Japanese company’s logo to the image of a cowboy wearing with his stereotypical hat. But in actual the logo represents a stylized image of the eye of a needle with a thread passed through it. it may quite interest you to know that earlier, the company used to produce weaving machines. However, the individual parts of the logo also spell out the company name.

2. Amazon

Amazon

CEO Jeff Bezos fell in love with the name for two reasons:

• First, it started with the letter ‘A’ which makes it appear on the top of any online alphabetical listing.

• Second, Amazon River itself is pretty fascinating, extremely diverse and of

course the largest in the world.

He envisioned the burgeoning company as having the same qualities. And as long as the logo is concerned, a yellow arrow travels from the letter ‘a’ to ‘z’, signifying that everything you could dream of is sold here.

3. McDonald's

There isn’t any hidden meaning except “M” for McDonald’s. According to BBC, he said customers will unconsciously recognize the logo as “symbolism of a pair of nourishing breasts.” Like it or not, their logo is one of the most recognizable in the world.

4. Apple

Apple

Of course, it’s an apple but have you ever wondered why the bite out of the side of it? This was originally done by the designer just to make sure that it is not being confused for a cherry or another fruit. In addition to this, the logo even represents the forbidden fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge” in the Biblical creation story of Adam and Eve.

VAIO is Sony’s brand line for its laptops. Apart from a stylized brand name, the logo refers turning analog waves into a digital form. ‘V’ and ‘A’ represents the analog waves while ‘I’ and ‘O’ represents the digital (even considered as 1 and 0 digits used in binary code).

6. Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Even though you check out Wikipedia for hours, there is no chance you haven’t given its logo much importance. However, there is a lot interesting stuff the logo conveys. Each piece of the image above features a glyph (letter or a character) that symbolizes multilingualism while the empty space at the top represents the incomplete nature of the project, i.e. articles and languages are yet to be added.

7. Google

The logo consist of four primary colors in a row and then broken by a secondary color. It shows that they don’t play by rules and are also playful without making the symbol bulky. Amazing, isn’t it?

8. Formula 1

Formula 1

Watch the logo carefully, can you spot the white space between the letter “F” and the red strips? Do you see the number 1? Besides, the red strips of the logo are even considered to be a graphical representation of the speed achieved by Formula 1 cars.

9. Pinterest

Pinterest / Via pinterest.com

Needless to say, the logo has the image of a pin hidden in the letter P. The popular internet site is used by people worldwide to collect images they like and ’pin’ them to their online notice board.

Blown away, aren’t you?

Author Bio

Rakesh Patel is Marketing Manager at eTatvaSoft - a mobile app development company. He relishes writing about various technology trends, management, leadership and much more buzzing things related to the IT industry. His idea of writing is to spread derived knowledge of the latest technologies through his online contribution amongst techgeeks and techlearners.

“Design sells. It's something that all of us know, but few of us consciously acknowledge.”