How Logos are Remembered | Hacker News Reader

How Logos are Remembered

signs.com

345 pointsnjbotkin65 comments

Fascinating but it doesn't seem to prove anything besides we struggle to draw complex logos from memory therefore the complex logos of Starbucks and Footlocker are at the bottom and the simpler logos of Target and Ikea at the top.

I don't think anyone will struggle to recognise the Starbucks brand despite the difficulty in drawing mermaids. In someways its quite fitting - they want you to believe their coffee is so complex that its worth >$5 and forget that you could make it at home for $0.20.

Yeah this almost seems limited by drawing skill and effort. Like I wouldn't bother trying to put a bunch of detail into the starbucks logo because it would end up looking bad so I'd probably just draw a quick approximation and call it done.

A better methodology might be to pair a rememberer and an artist (like for forensic artist mugshots). But that would be a ton of work if you wanted to get decent sample size.

IMO, for everybody apart from a few graphic designers, it's not drawing skill that limits accuracy of the Starbucks logo: it's that we never registered its exact geometry in the first place. The ideas of Gestalt perception are frequently used in logo design, and one of them is the "binary" figure/ground relationship that the two colours of the Starbucks logo create. It's complex, and almost everyone just sees a "Gestalt" and doesn't parse the arrangement of parts. Somebody with drafting skills could easily draw it based on textual instructions, but definitely not accurately from memory without a more careful study of the logo than (almost) anyone ever undertakes.

Some sketches are hard to draw even after minutes of watching. Without remembering "there is <n> <x>'s on <y> background with <z> outline ...", not many people can draw exactly what they've seen few seconds ago. Our perception and recalling works in very fuzzy way; you can be absolutely sure that logo is what you've drawn, but this is just false memory constructed by subconscious to fill the gaps. Our minds should contain fantastic amounts of these, retained and restructured there by side-effects of the thinking process.

> you could make it at home for $0.20

Probably more like $0.15, since you don't need to leave the coffee on the burner for 6 hours, thus saving on energy costs.

> Fascinating but it doesn't seem to prove anything besides we struggle to draw complex logos from memory therefore the complex logos of Starbucks and Footlocker are at the bottom and the simpler logos of Target and Ikea at the top.

I'm unconvinced. Of course complex logos are harder to draw, but it doesn't explain why so many people got extremely simple logos wrong, like Adidas' or Domino's, while comparatively harder logos got better scores, like Burger King's or 7-Eleven's!

I think there's something more at play than just logo complexity.

I'd say re-production and re-cognition are two separate skills.

I recognize the Mona Lisa when I see it, but I won't be able to reproduce it.

Or, in a non-visual field, consider instantly recognizing certain voices ("Good news, everyone!" "You may remember me from such films as..." "I will find you, and I will kill you.") to the effort it takes to imitate those voices well enough for someone else to know who you're imitating.

The problem with Starbucks is not that I can make it cheaper at home. The problem is that I wouldn't want to drink that burned garbage if they paid me.

Starbucks coffee is not bad, in my opinion. The problem is the optional "fanciness" they put into it (all that disgusting caramel, syrup, cream and whatnot), and the huge amount of milk they put into their lattes and cappuccinos. Their actual coffee, which you can taste if you order it black, is good. I don't think they burn it.

I like milk in my coffee -- what we in South America call "café con leche", which is closer to half and half -- but unfortunately Starbucks doesn't offer anything like it. You can ask for extra shots of coffee but they charge extra, and their coffee is already expensive as it is.

The Starbucks logo is a mermaid? I'd know it if I saw it but I can't recall it at all other than green and I think humanoid.

This is seriously well done. I love great stats. I guess the real question here is how memorable is something versus how prolific it is? Could you have the most amazingly memorable logo, without it plastered on every inch of the earth? Likely not.

They missed what I consider to be the best logo in history: McDonalds. The ability to draw that one from memory would undoubtedly be at the top.

Ditto for Nike.

That was my first thought too.

For that matter, Logo of Apple and Audi are two things that are iconic and just floats on top of mind with no effort.

It's funny you mention Audi before the Olympics' logo, though similar.

Olympics' logo would be interesting to see, because I can't really think of the right color order. I doubt many people can.

Not sure what this implies but I couldn't remember what the Audi logo looked like until I saw this post.

Car brand logos in general are pretty iconic, because you see them all over.

Tesla comes to mind quickly and sharply - I assume the very positive feeling I associate with it makes it more vibrant to me.

I think it's more than that. They tend to be simple and monochromatic, since they need to be displayed on the car itself - that helps them to be memorable.

My favorites are Infiniti and Toyota.

Article has Apple and surprisingly only 20% got it. I think the experiment ran with the hn population would give radically different results, but still, the claim that apple floats to mind without effort is just incompatible with the data as collected

I can only remember the apple, cannot recall which side it is bitten.

Lots of people would get the direction wrong.

Doubtful. Examples like IKEA shows that people may recall the red M above stores instead of the yellow M on a red square from corporate or think the background white. Did the exercise mentally before checking on wiki and got the colors down right, but added McDonald written under it like in promotional material, so there’s that.

Let's not be too sure about that. For Target, a lot of people forgot to put the name under the logo. Does McDonald's have a name with the logo? If so, where is the name?

Also, what about capitalization? is Mcdonald's all lowercase, small-caps, or first letter uppercase? is the "D" upper case? Many people may write "MacDonald's" (notice the extra a) which is a common mistake given that the burgers are named "Big Mac" not "Big Mc".

For Domino's a lot of people forgot the apostrophe. You also forgot that for McDonald's.

What about the background color? is it white? red? blue? will people remember where the "registered" trademark is?

These are all mistakes that push a drawing out of the "perfect" criteria.

This is really fascinating as it draws really accurate to my experience learning Japanese Kanji.

I can study either recognition, where I can recognize a large amount of them in a short time period, or generation, where I can write them but then it's slower since I have to repeat writing each several times [1]. I find out that a combination of both is best for me at this stage and for my objectives.

[1] I use my own Anki alternative, https://core.cards/

I liked the ending quiz too. Though the question about reddit is wrong. I answered orange and they said it's red. It's actually neither, it's orangered. That's literally what they call it themselves.

Using text to quiz colors is folly

https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

At the end, I couldn't figure out what the difference was meant to be with half of the choices. They had a bunch of pictures and I'm like "well, three of these are exactly the same."

It's really interesting how many people remember the previous version of any given logo. I wonder if this means these logos were updated at the correct time, so when people see them they seem fresh and modern.

Some logos have changed from memorable, iconic, and well-designed into listless forgettable mailed-in husks intended to be more "modern," one of the worst offenders being Pepsi.

The Pepsi logo became super memorable in my mind when I pictured it as a rather rotund person wearing a red shirt and blue trousers leaning backwards

Like Strong Sad! http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lEbPtIKmS_U/SaAuUZOmJrI/AAAAAAAABb...

The ability to draw a memorable thing from memory is entirely dependent on how much of an artist the drawer is. It has nothing to do with the memorability of the logo. We can all recognize the Pepsi or Coca-Cola logos, but only artists who have made mental notes of the shapes will be able to draw a likeness... And that doesn't even mean anything.

As others say, this is recall vs recognition.

What would be an interesting next step would be to trial the cleaned up logos to see how well people recognised the correct ones and rejected the others

Who can forget this memorable Logo?

http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp

Why is there a bunch of what looks like really old BASIC code at the bottom? Pretty sure most LISP processors will choke on that.

That's LOGO, not LISP.

The program at top is a LOGO interpreter, written in LISP.

If you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke.

Thanks, somehow I managed to grow up in the 80s without ever actually using Logo and getting LISP only in one programming course plus a little bit of Emacs (vi FTW!).

yeah but having someone be able to articulate the make up of a logo on a paper is a huge departure then you having an identifiable logo that can not be confused for another by the consumer.

Idgi. Am I supposed to be surprised or maybe unimpressed that test subjects did not remember these miniscule details? Why did I get a sense the author expected a movement of heart?

Logo design is not concerned with trivia, but with symbolic association. If there is a goal, it is gross, unmediated communication of form and resulting symbol.

If anything, this study would be best used for these companies to know what to remove from the logos in their next redesign.

I'm really confused by the graphs. The axis are labeled exactly the same, so I don't understand how they're ordering these logos within them.

Yeah, they're ordered like the flow of text. Took me a while.

The author needs to put his site assets on a CDN.

I'm getting a 404, but Google's cache works for me: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QB_TwJ...

Fun read.

Should companies use studies like this to recreate their logos? Is it a look into the subconscious of how we process symbols and icons?

I hope the people who drew the least accurate ones are just unfamiliar with these companies, I have bad memory but these are hilariously bad. Also the Foot Locker man still looks like he's wearing a hat to me when I see the logo so I'm not sure that's a memory issue.

I got a pretty good laugh out of the various intentionally incorrect logos. I think you're doing impressively well if somehow you manage to get people to remember even a single dominant feature and color of your logo.

I wonder how well this correlates with brand recognition. For example, if people are better able to remember the logo, does that mean it's more recognizable?

It could be good for trying to design better logos.

Interesting question but I find it doubtful. Coca-Cola's logo is fairly complex.

It is complex in intricacy but simple in form.

Seeing so many timeless logos from the 60s and 70s make it look like that era was the golden age for logo design. OTOH, that might just be survivorship bias.

Think it's funny that the person who drew the Pizza Hut logo for Domino's is considered more accurate than the person who drew a domino.

I'd love more test logos.

Also, I'd be incapable of drawing BK logo. And even IKEA I would probably hesitate a bit.

we just wasted 15 mins in our office giving ourselves this test on the whiteboard.

Was it just me or are there duplicates of all of the images on that site?

That Starbuck logo, is that a mermaid with two tails?

My mind is blown at Apple's 1976 logo!

the replacements for 7-11 are pretty great

503 error.

Hugged to death

https://imgur.com/a/eO2cp

Cool website lol!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com