A great logo is recognizable in any form | Hacker News Reader

A great logo is recognizable in any form

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232 pointsvnchr72 comments

At least give credit where credit is due.

Source: http://designersgotoheaven.com/post/1242437663/changes-of-th...

No, thanks for this! I just found this image while poking around and I reposted it because I thought people would find it meaningful (every startup has to figure out its branding).

I had no idea it would go to the top of HN... Its only my second post.

No worries :) Saw this on Reddit yesterday and spent an hour looking through the rest of the posts on the blog; some interesting graphic work curated there.

Surprisingly, this doesn't include the original Tim Burton logo (which is one of my favorite): http://blogs.theage.com.au/schembri/batman.jpg

No "shoulders", and "feet" on the tail.

The first time I saw that logo, on a text-free movie poster, I thought someone badly needed to see a dentist.

They say, it depends on personality. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

Matt Groening figured this out a long time ago. He says that whenever he creates a new character, it has to be recognizable in silhouette. Look at all his characters. Bart, Homer, Leela, Bender, Fry. None of them need color.

… but you should really stick to one form.

It’s nice to have a logo everyone can draw from memory and that is then still recognizable. I don’t think it’s advisable for organizations to change the ductus of their logo all that often, though.

It's an interesting point but I can't think of too many more examples. Anyone else come up with other similarly flexible logos?

Just a few off the top of my head: Apple, Android, Windows, Nike, WNF, Playboy, NBC.

EDIT: I didn't realize that all of these variations of Batman logos were actually used at one time, so I just thought of logos that could be stretched and skewed while still being recognizable.

Wasn't the point that all the Batman logos were different but all still recognisably Batman?

I'm not sure how that's true with Nike - the swoosh is very specific. Change it even slightly and it stops being a Nike swoosh and just becomes a curve or a tick.

Similarly Apple has been black and white or colour but the basic design is the same. Playboy I'll bow to your greater knowledge ;-). Android hasn't been around long enough for any significant variation that I'm aware of. Change it and you just end up with another cartoony robot.

Windows has flexed a fair amount - the same but different - so that one is fair, but I'm not sure the others have.

A better example might be Pepsi, who have changed their logo / branding many times over the years but have kept consistent, recognizable features:

http://logotalks.com/2009/03/05/new-pepsi-logo/

Their 2009 logo takes these recogizable features even further, making the loop on the p's circular and adding the wave to the letter "e".

Mildly relevant: http://www.suckatlife.com/pepsiLogoBlowatlife.html

The Batman logo is something rare, I think. Most of the logos you list are bound by either color (NBC's peacock looks funny in monotone) or shape (Apple would have a hard time reshaping the apple, Nike can only make minor changes to the outline of the swoosh.) A bright orange batman logo would still evoke the same character. I'm not a graphic designer so I can't speak to why this works, but it's pretty neat.

I think part of it is that they've allowed it to change and evolve which is unusual for companies.

I remember working with Shell. They have three volumes of rules on how you can treat the pectern (the Shell logo). No colour changes, proportion changes, definite rules about handling it on different backgrounds, about it's use if different contexts, about use with text... On and on.

Ironically if DC had been like that they'd actually have a far weaker brand.

Fun fact: through the years, Royal Dutch Shell's logo has changed quite a bit. It started as a depiction of a mussel shell, the current scallop shell logo came as recent as 1971.

"the pecten symbol currently in use worldwide was designed in 1971 by loewy. the design and testing process completed by loewy's firm took more than four years. one of the tests involved hanging various prototype pectens on poles where they could be viewed by drivers passing on a nearby british motorway. drivers were later contacted for their opinions on the prototypes."

http://www.designboom.com/portrait/loewy.html

If we're doing fun facts: Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo (the little lollies, like Kojak used to suck) back in 1969.

Improbably but true. I'd link to their website but they've turned the whole thing into Flash so I can't. Their design has clearly been going downhill since 1969....

It's extremely common for identity rules like that to exist for a company. In my experience a company hires a hotshot, really kick ass design firm to design their identity and branding. And the end result is pretty much a tome of rules and examples on how the branding can be used in just about every conceivable situation. From there the internal design teams take it and utilize it.

Those guidelines are extremely useful when you need another third-party to do work. Otherwise they are likely to want to express themselves in your logo. For internal use, with a deep brand understanding, you should allow your team to be more flexible -- to stray, they should have a reason.

Do you have any evidence which suggests that third-party creativity w/r/t your logo is bad for you? As one example, I see all kinds of websites with reddit/digg/twitter/facebook buttons that have been restyled to fit the design of the website; I really can’t see how this hurts those brands.

(Or do you only mean third parties working directly on your behalf? I suppose in that case guidelines would be important.)

yes -- working directly on our behalf -- designing a tradeshow booth, an ad, a giveaway. They expect us to send logo guidelines. Our guidelines are simple (just a couple of pages) -- Just showing how to make it monochrome, and some acceptable variations.

Let's not forget Firefox's rules

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/about/logo/

       I'm not a graphic designer so I can't speak to why this works, but it's pretty neat.

I think in the case of Batman it's mostly just luck/coincidence that it works. The logo isn't designed by professional designers/marketers who are carefully trying to craft a certain response. It's literally just whoever happens to be drawing Batman at the time draws the logo on his chest in whatever way he desires. Kane (who invented Batman in the late 30's) wasn't a designer or marketer in the slightest. He just decided to throw a black bat on Batman's chest.

I suppose in the case of the movies the logo is carefully pondered, but most of these variations came from the comics themselves.

It works because bats are animals and inherently dynamic, so we're accustomed to seeing them from all angles. We've been conditioned to recognize many different shapes as "bat".

I didn't even realize Android had a logo. I mean, I read this and other tech sites all the time, and I'm sure I've seen it a hundred times. I know there has to be one. But I couldn't for the life of me tell you what it is.

Is that a logo fail or a me fail?

> Is that a logo fail or a me fail?

They're pretty consistent with their green robot, so I'd think it's you.

Nope rules of branding, it's never a consumer fail. The whole point of branding is to embed it in the consumer's mind. If it's not there, it's the organisation's fault, not the consumer - the consumer isn't meant to be paying attention to this and has no obligation to learn about a brand, it's the job of the marketeer to give him no choice in the matter.

That said fail is probably harsh as it's a relatively new thing and it takes time to build up exposure and awareness.

But it's like those adverts where you go "you remember that advert with the thing? That's great, I love that advert. What's it for again?" - advertising fail. If you don't remember the product all those happy associations mean nothing and it was all for nothing.

The problem with the Android brand is that it isn't sold to end consumers, since it's better for the manufacturer to differentiate the phone than to sell it as yet another Android generic device.

A bit of both?

I really don't rate the Android logo. To me it seems to be saying: this phone is the domain of geeks, and it has no heart.

(Note: I count myself as a geek -- it just seems like a rather limiting brand statement).

I suppose you could make a case for Google. They change the look of their logo on their homepage very frequently, but you still know what it's supposed to be. And they also add extra "o's" to the logo for the pagination.

They're changing their on-page logo. I don't think they could get away with major logo changes, let alone doodles, off their pages. When you type in www.google.com, you realize you're on Google. Their blue-red-yellow-green logo is their recognized one.

Tux!

Try to guess which company is using this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2601554/logo.jpg

404

The link is 404, I don't understand why aw3c2 was downvoted.

404s do not contribute positively to the conversation. Is it not the case that comments are supposed to earn upvotes if they contribute positively, and downvotes othewise (including downvotes for mere noise)?

(Didn't vote either way, myself.)

It could save other readers the time of loading a link that isn't going to work? I thought it was contributing in that sense.

He was -3 when I commented originally.

Telling a poster their link is a 404 can contribute positively by prompting them to find an alternate URL. Otherwise, how would they know?

How embarrassing, I fail at reading comprehension. I thought the question was "I don't understand why tomerico was downvoted", and that was what I attempted to answer. The source of my confusion was that aw3c2 had net positive votes, and tomerico had net negative.

At a glance, Dropbox :p

But more seriously, you should put that in your Public folder.

Mastercard's logo has gone through a number of iterations. But the red and orange spheres remain and are easily recognizable.

Perhaps AT&T? Sphere with blue stripes?

And perhaps this is cheating, but since this started with comic books, Spider-Man. Similarly, the "branding" of the United States is pretty distinctive. You see a star and stripe in any form, and it's pretty much "oh US" (forget about Liberia).

Perhaps the most interesting or important is: all of heraldry. One might initially think that is rather remote from logos, but it is really a principal root of them. Heraldic devices -- 'armorial bearings' (particularly) -- are defined abstractly, in clear conceptual forms, leaving the rendering details unspecified. (Heraldry also developed a graphical serialisation standard long before, and in a way more elegant than, SVG-XML etc.) It might be 500 years old, but it still has something to learn from.

There's a lot of truth in that.

This reminds me of an old interview with Linus saying that while he thought the Windows logo was ok (he might have said good, I don't remember), you can't really do anything with it, while you can do put Tux is all sort of situations. It was quite common to see him playing ice hockey or reading a book or whatever -- if you knew the logo (Tux) you knew it was Linux-related.

I disagree. The Windows logo is just a cross in a box with multi-colored panels. You can twist, turn, bend, or re-color it considerably before it's unrecognizable. When they've wanted to make their images more dynamic, they've curved the lines. When they've wanted to look more professional they've muted the colors and outlines. It's still clearly a divided four-panel window.

In contrast, Tux seems a bit stuck. It's going to be hard to make him anything but cute and cuddly. A more stylized penguin would look cold and sinister.

Since Windows 95, I've always looked at is as a flag. Even the Windows Logo screensaver had it waving like a flag.

I can honestly say, I've never looked at the logo and thought "Hey! That's a window." But that's just me.

I did a google image search for 'Tux' - I think it demonstrates the versatility of having a living character as a logo. You can put him in lots of different situations and it's still clear that he's the 'Linux Penguin'.

http://www.vistawallpaper.org/vista-wallpapers/windows-glass...

How the Windows logo has evolved:

http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingPr...

Ironically from a good article on mozilla.com, talking about how they're evolving the Firefox icon:

http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2009/05/14/evolving-a-produc...

Of the examples they give Windows is notable as being the logo which has undergone the most significant changes (while still remaining recognisable).

> In contrast, Tux seems a bit stuck. It's going to be hard to make him anything but cute and cuddly.

I smell a photoshop contest.

No need to call a special one: http://images.google.com/images?q=tux

Whether this proves or disproves the point probably depends more on your personal definition of "cute and cuddly".

Interestingly, that image search shows the Crystal Tux designs (one shows up second in that search for me - it's shiny, rounder, and has unevenly sized eyes) is nearly as popular as the classic Larry Ewing design in adaptations.

Unlike the Windows logo, Tux is also a mascot.

I can't picture the Windows logo playing hockey. It doesn't even have legs. (I can picture Clippy, though. Argh.)

A question though: Is this a logo I am recognizing or just a black bat ; which if filled with black and projected at this angle can rarely be anything else than the Batman logo?

Um, isn't that the point?

I mean that in this logo example, there is little semantic noise in the recognition process:

Not many other logos using bats (because bats typically scare people maybe). Now, imagine your logo was a cow, or a bicycle, do you think the logo would be recognizable in any form? regardless of how well it was designed? I guess this statement is just not true in every case. It's just like Apple's design philosophy: There is just room for one Apple in every industry (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1762682). Maybe there is also just room enough for one black bat logo in the world...

Unfortunately, the freedom enjoyed by entertainment logo designers with regards the choice of their iconographies is nothing like the constraints of say, designing a logo for one more enterprise software startup for for one more ISP.

Now, imagine your logo was a cow, or a bicycle, do you think the logo would be recognizable in any form? regardless of how well it was designed?

Your logo is supposed to create an association between an image and your company. If your logo is a generic something that gets lost in the noise of all the other similar logos, it is pretty much by definition not well designed.

If anyone could just pull a fantastic, iconic logo out of their ass on a whim, this story wouldn't have gotten any upvotes. You seem to be saying "gosh, I can't blindly apply this to crank out my own logos, so it's not useful", but that's wrong - it's useful precisely because it's so rare, because it becomes an ideal to aspire to.

If anyone could just pull a fantastic, iconic logo out of their ass on a whim, this story wouldn't have gotten any upvotes. You seem to be saying "gosh, I can't blindly apply this to crank out my own logos, so it's not useful", but that's wrong

No, I guess You misunderstood me. I am just saying that while this might be an ideal logo to aspire to, it is something most designers should not worry about achieving in order to satisfy their bosses or clients. I love the bat nonetheless!

Wait, no one else thought that these are variations of the Bacardi logo first? I must be drinking too much...

I think this is a very extreme case, but it’s interesting how the logo in this case becomes more of a concept than an actual design. Indeed if I asked you to draw the batman logo most people would probably design a different one because there isn’t only one.

It seems that the logos with the most mileage (ie. you can bend, squeeze, stretch or distort in many ways before it becoming unrecognisable) are the ones that have a simple silhouette outline or are made up of a few geometric shapes and colours.

* Batman logo

* Windows logo

* Pepsi logo

* Coke curve

* Addidas stripes

Are just a few that come to immediate mind.

[EDIT: Formatting]

Nike Swoosh

Or...

It's recognizable because it's a bat.

Yeah... it's kind of like putting two dozen pictures of human faces next to each other and saying, "Look! They're different, but they're all clearly human faces!"

I mean--that is kind of amazing, but I think it has more to do with faces--and bats--being symbols than well-designed logos.

If no one has read or heard of "The Brand Gap" I would recommend it. There is a part of the book that covers this and another example of a good logo is the MTV logo.

Not to be confused with "the Gap brand".

When the logo becomes this generic and in this many styles, you're probably going to have a hard time maintaining a trademark on it.

I don't have the source off the top of my head, but the original coke bottles were designed to be reconizable even after they broke.

I found it referenced on wikipedia[1], but the source given[2] in the article does not mention broken bottles. The documents in the collection may.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Contour_bottle_design [2] http://www.vigo.lib.in.us/vcplarchive/inventories/business/d...

Some of those would not be recognizable as the batman logo if presented alone.

Similar: I would recognize a variation of the Reddit alien anywhere.

not sure i agree.

its not the logo which makes it instantly recognizable - it's the hundreds of millions of dollars of branding and advertising

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