Download Shell Logo

[Reginald Hanfy]

Inthe days before fax machines and the internet, many logos included subtle details that would become blurred at small sizes. From the 1950s onwards, the icon became more and more simplified, improving recognition and memorability.

The emblem was redrawn in 1904 and now the shell was placed vertically, and drawn more detailed, with many black and white stripes, red lurching its structure. To make the look of the logo more powerful, the image was placed on a black background.

The iconic yellow and red color palette was adopted by the company in 1948, and this was the time when the lettering was placed over the shell, written in bold white sans-serif with clean straight contours and thick lines.

In 1955 the contours and accents of the shell were minimized, and the lettering changed its color to red, having its lines shortened and made more delicate. Later, in 1961, the company started placing its iconic yellow shell on a red background.

The current Shell emblem was designed in 1971 by Raymond Loewy and features a sleek art-deco style shape with a rounded top part and rectangular bottom. The yellow image has a thick red outline and a minimum of red stripes over its body. The cleanest and neatness of the lines make the emblem look elegant yet strong and confident.

As for the wordmark, today it is not an official element of the Shell visual identity, though still can be seen on some of the stations and products. The wordmark in a bold traditional sans-serif featured red color and looks simple yet elegant.

Who designed the Shell logo?

In 1971, Raymond Loewy developed the logo for Shell, which the company has been using ever since with only minor updates. Loewy (1893-1986) was an exceptionally prolific industrial designer. The list of his works includes not only commercial emblems, like logos for BP and Exxon, but also such projects as Air Force One livery, Coca-Cola fountain dispenser, and Lucky Strike package.

As soon as in 1994, however, the picture was replaced by a seashell, which also left an impression of a photograph. The 1909 version featured slightly different proportions, yet it still had a photographic quality.

When did Shell change their logo?

Throughout its long and bright history, the Shell corporation has changed its logo about ten times, with the original version depicting a horizontally laying shell in black-and-white, and the latest redesign, held in 1995, introducing a bold and intense yellow and red scallop shell above the extended red logotype.

Just as the more than 10 transformations that its logo has undergone throughout the last century, Shell has kept innovating in its advertisement strategies, which adapt to the needs and trends of society. One may explore part of this legacy at The Shell Heritage Art Collection, which is one of the most renowned commercial art collections, including work by Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, and Vanessa Bell. From inviting artists to create its ads to educating the general public on issues such as emergency situations and vehicle safety, the Dutch company keeps connecting to its consumers effectively time after time!

Laura Gmez Aurioles is a Ph.D. student in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. As a member of the Creative Writing department, her research aims to find the correct narrative techniques to create a virtual reality time capsule to preserve Intangible Cultural Heritage stories.

Royal Dutch Shell plc, commonly referred to as Shell, is an international oil and gas company with its headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands and its registered office at the Shell Centre in London, United Kingdom. According to the Forbes Magazine list for 2011, it is also the second-largest energy corporation and the fifth-largest organization in the world. It operates in almost all areas of the oil and gas industry, including production and exploration, refining, supply and marketing, trading, petrochemicals, and power generation.

The initial Shell logo underwent its first major redesign in 1904 wherein it was changed into a Shell of Scallop. Sadly, it failed to impress the audience and went disregarded. Surprisingly, Shell went on using it as its brand identity for over two decades. We wonder, why?

The Shell logo went through a slight modification in 1955 wherein the red strokes in the preceding logo were removed to make it look more robust; the name was kept intact in the logo. This was a welcome change for the audience, which also became the inspiration for other potential changes in the logo.

For more than 100 years the word Shell, our pecten emblem and distinctive red and yellow colours have visualised the Shell brand and promoted our values and the quality of our products and services all over the world.

The word was elevated to corporate status in 1897, when Samuel formed the Shell Transport and Trading Company. The first logo in 1901 was a mussel shell, but by 1904 a scallop shell or pecten emblem had been introduced to give a visual representation of the corporate and brand name.

The #makethefuture initiative is focused on innovations that drive human progress. The perfect example is Laurence Kemball-Cook, who brought a powerful idea to the Shell LiveWIRE programme: to refurbish a run-down community football pitch in Morro da Mineira, a favela in Rio de Janeiro.

These sizeable considerations led the designers to explore various iterations of the shell, refining and formalising its properties, introducing geometry and removing the logotype from within the shell to improve flexibility.

Each designer saw the benefit of introducing custom wordmark and Gerstner and Kamekura went further, experimenting with the creation of a bespoke typeface. This was in keeping with the developments in corporate identity at the time which sought to employ economies of scale to reduce the cost of producing vast quantities of print communications and corporate stationery. The designers worked independently and, as later recounted by Yusaku Kamekeura, were unaware of the others working on the same project.

The origin of the Shell logo dates back to the corporation\u2019s founding, when Marcus Samuel Junior formed The Shell Transport and Trading Company. The name \u2018Shell' was selected for the sentimental reason that Marcus Samuel Senior, who had started the family's Far East trade years earlier, imported sea shells to decorate boxes.

The first Shell logo was a mussel. This was drawn in a \u2018charming rather than a distinctive way\u2019. However, after four years, the \u2018graphic possibilities of the scallop\u2019 led to the introduction of a new logo that, with just slight incremental changes, was able to sustain a sense of contemporary relevance over a period of 60 years.

In 1964, four designers were asked to submit proposals to evolve Shell\u2019s corporate image, having felt that the design, created in 1961 appeared dated as corporate identity design was to be modernised across many industries.

The intention was to create a consistent, formalised and practical image for the corporation. As outlined in the corporate manual, the \u201Cshell must be the same everywhere, a requirement all the more necessary in these days of frequent travel and instant communication\u201D.

As the expectations of a corporate visual style was to extend across borders and operate within different contexts this had to be extremely versatile and easily reproducible. The task of the logo was to identify and brand many of Shell\u2019s subsidiaries, hundreds of service stations, fleets of road and sea tankers and thousands of widely different products and corporate communications.

Raymond Loewy\u2019s solution introduced a \u2018simpler\u2019 and \u2018stronger\u2019 pectin design with a heavy outline that created contrast with a saturated inner yellow. The other major component was the word 'Shell' which, like Kamekura and Gerstner, was removed from the Shell and employed original custom drawn letterforms, as well as defining and formalising the spatial and size relationship with the 'Shell' logo.

The two components\u2013logo and logotype\u2013together formed a basic unit, but both could appear on their own. Various configurations and proportions were defined, and grids were added to aid fabrication of signage. Alongside full colour versions, the addition of single colour versions, as well as those knocked out of colour, were introduced to improve usability where none had existed before. Further graphics elements were later introduced including a red band and the flooding of surfaces with the saturated yellow.

Adrian Frutiger\u2019s Univers 65 Bold and Univers 45 Light, typefaces that were readily available internationally, provided Shell with a corporate typeface that could be consistently and economically deployed across the many countries it operated within.

Despite the viability of the solutions put forward by each designer, and offering similar answers to problems of flexibility and consistency, it would by Loewy\u2019s solution that would be developed between 1964 and 1970 and rolled out in 1971. Aside from a small update in 1995, which amended the colours to make these warmer, the logo remains the same today as it did back in 1971.

3a8082e126