History Of Logo Design Pdf

[Exequiel Mondragon]

Weall know that a logo has the potential to be a very powerful asset for a brand. In fact, many companies are identified by their logo faster than they are by their name. Logos are all around us and well-known ones are easily recognizable by almost every consumer. But where did the logo originate? And how has it evolved over time?

The origins of the logo can be dated back to the Ancient Egyptians. They originally used hieroglyphics to brand and identify their possessions, until in medieval times when graphic imagery such as coats of arms were used to distinguish between the statuses of different nobilities.

The current era of logo design began in the 1870s with the first abstract logo, the Bass red triangle. Thanks to the introduction of color printing and the advertising industry, logos became essential for brands if they wanted to be memorable to potential customers.

The Chase Logo (below), which was crafted in 1960 by Chermayeff & Geismar, paved the way for modern logo design. The successful logos we have today predominantly consist of simple and easily recognizable logo marks that are effective in remaining consistent with their corresponding brands.

Technological advancements are also causing the role of logos in our culture to evolve. We can see how logo design has changed in its shift from complexity to simplicity, reflected in the visual overload we have experienced as a result of our increasingly complex lifestyles.

The goal of designing an authentic logo for a brand should be to create a unique and simple logo mark that is both distinguishable and easily recognizable. Today, a decent logo is flexible in both its design and application and can ideally stand alone. The simpler the logo, the more easily recognizable it is in the modern world.

We live in a Brand Era, where branding is in, and for some, aspiring to the Paul Rand style of logo craftsmanship is about as hip and contemporary as writing your invoices with a quill. Yes, logo design is only one facet of the powerful force that we call brand identity. The history of logo design begins with the roots of human expression.

Fragment of a vase, third millennium B.C. The figures on this vase bear a striking similarity to the cave paintings of Lascaux and even to contemporary imagery like the Puma logo. These similarities reveal the harmony and union of human communication over great distances of time and geographic location.

In semiotics (the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation), human communication is discussed in terms of signs and signifiers. Signs can take the form of words, images, flavors, or even odors: things that have no intrinsic meaning until we invest it in them. We perceive, understand, and negotiate the world around us by investing meaning in all manner of signs and symbols. In the West, an image of a snake signifies evil. But without our Western cultural and mythological associations (many of which are rooted in the Bible), a serpent is just a serpent.

Greek signature seals, fifth century B.C. Affluent Greek citizens used these molded stamps to sign or endorse documents. Using an animal image to identify oneself has a long history predating famous animal logos like Lacoste and Penguin.

The meaning of a logo is often an elusive concept, and two top professionals may disagree about whether a particular logo is a masterpiece or an abomination. This subjective nature of meaning in logography is part of the beauty and wonder of the craft.

In this era, the brand is bigger and more powerful than ever. Brands have become so big that some people have logo tattoos (physically branded with a brand) while celebrities like Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey have successfully developed themselves into personal mega brands. Brands like Nike have transformed themselves into lifestyle choices that consumers can integrate into their own identity. How much further can we go? What comes next?

As brand identity designers, merely designing a logo for a client is not good enough. It is also unacceptable to stand on the cultural sidelines or design with our heads in the sand. We must be students of the changing cultures around us. We must take active roles in the use of design to strengthen and navigate the futures of the industries, people, and causes we believe in.

Now, you might think that logos are a relatively contemporary idea, thought up by someone in a marketing department. But people have been using emblems to identify and differentiate themselves for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Around 1,000 years later, Egyptians began incorporating grids into their designs so that they could develop a set of fixed standards for their drawings. This has become fundamental in logo design today as grids set proportions and ratios that allow a consistent reproduction of the same design.

At the same point, the Ancient Greeks had also developed their own form of script, known as Linear B, which consisted of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs symbolizing different objects or commodities.

Another surprising early logo development was with shop signs. Aside from aristocracy, most of medieval Europe were illiterate, so stores would hang up signs to identify what goods or services they provided, according to T Signs.

In 1389, King Richard II of England passed a law that required breweries to display a sign outside or face having their ale confiscated. This was seen as a safety measure as, during this period, water was not always good to drink, and ale was the usual replacement, so the signage was intended to help passing inspectors.

In fact, brewers appeared to be ahead of the curve when it came to logos. The Belgian brewer Stella Artois is considered to be one of the first companies to use a logo in 1366, according to 1000 Logos. A reference to that date remains on its logo to this day.

For many, life began to change after Johannes Gutenburg invented the printing press in 1440. It helped create a wider literate reading public and spread information quickly, more widely, and accurately. But it also opened doors for more contemporary logo designs as publishers wanted to take ownership of their work.

By the 1800s, advancements in technology meant that color printing in mass was available for the first time ever, allowing companies to make eye-catching labels, advertisements, and posters for their brands.

One example is the Chase bank logo, which was designed by Tom Geismar, and was one of the first abstract symbol logos to be used by an American corporation. He wanted to create something bold that could be printed on a small scale and had meaning. The geometry of the emblem and its colors stood for confidence, loyalty, professionalism, and unity and showed the bank as a strong financial organization with its customers as the main value.

By the 1990s, personal computers had become accessible to more people. When Adobe developed InDesign and Photoshop in the early 2000s, it brought sophisticated digital graphic design tools to the masses, allowing small businesses to create their own logos without needing to hire an expensive agency.

With Sufio, you can create your own unique invoices using one of our professionally-designed invoice templates. It only takes a couple of minutes to add your logo, edit the colors, and begin creating and sending stylish documents to your customers.

The history of logos goes back to ancient family crests, hieroglyphs and symbolism. Early versions of logos developed in the Middle Ages (around 1300 AD), as shops and pubs used signage to represent what they did. The first modern logo designs were created in the early 1900s, evolving alongside mass printing.

Read on for a quick guided tour through the history of logo design, that will highlight the historical connections, and help anyone hoping to design a logo to create something more powerful and effective.

Between 70,000 BC and 7000 BC, primitive peoples from all over the world laid the foundations of the graphic arts by painting animals in caves. Around 8000 BC, people in Assyria, Egypt, Carthage, Persia, Media and Sumer created pottery that communicated aesthetic, ethical, cultural, socio-political and religious information.

Even in these distant, primitive stretches of history, people and cultures were representing themselves and their ideas with symbols and illustrations. Nowhere was that more apparent than in Ancient Egypt, starting around the fourth millennium BC. Not only did the Egyptians develop hieroglyphics, a formal writing system, where images represented words or sounds, but they were also prolific artists. Their paintings and sculpture included specific symbolic images and colors that held specific meanings.

Not to say that the Egyptians had a monopoly on using images symbolically. During the same timeframe, the roots of calligraphy in the form of characters developed in China. Here each word or idea had its own symbol, and this foundation influenced later languages, even those that were less visual (like English).

Heraldry is a system of assigning design elements societal meaning and status. A certain set of colors and shapes would represent a certain noble family. This set of imagery was combined to create a unique coat of arms. Sound familiar?

By 105 AD a paper making industry had begun in China. It extended into Japan by about 610 AD. By contrast, it was not until about 1276 AD that paper was first made in Italy after being imported by Arab traders into Europe. It was eventually made in England in about 1495 AD.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, which caused the production of printed materials to become far more common, setting the stage for modern logo design as authors and printers of materials sought to claim ownership of their work.

Whether it was one iconic image or a larger trend, the 1950s marked a paradigm shift in thought surrounding logos. As companies realized how impactful symbols could be, people began to move away from simply creating utilitarian logos for identification purposes, and began to put a great deal of thought into intentionally branding their businesses.

3a8082e126