Logo Design History

Logo Design History and philosophy behind it.

Macintosh

American company Apple was the first computer firm not to use its name as its corporate identity. Selling a computer under the name and image of a fruit was conceived by Californian Steve Jobs and his colleagues (even the word "Macintosh" is the name of an apple variety). The motif of a multicolored apple with a bite taken out of it is a reference to the Bible story of Adam and Eve, in which the apple represents the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

Yahoo

From the beginning, the company’s mission is ‘to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge’, but the real success of Yahoo! was largely based on the marketing strategy of the company and the branding of its identity (logo). In the overall success of a business, logos play an important role in the corporate world. They become the identity of a company when the business expands and thus generates the general perception about the company. When Yahoo became a corporation in 1995, they kept the similar idea in their mind before finalizing their logo. For them, the Yahoo logo was a mean to express the company’s mission and idea to the general public. That’s why the chosen word ‘Yahoo’ in the Yahoo logo is an acronym for ‘Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle’. But according to Filo and Yang, they selected the name because they liked the general definition of ‘yahoo’: rude, unsophisticated, and uncouth. For the color scheme of the Yahoo logo, they went for a safer approach with a red colored theme which complimented the yahoo’s definition.

Adidas

The 3 striped Adidas logo was created by Adi Dassler, founder of Adidas. Adidas Logo was first used in 1967. Beginning with the production of training and sports foot wear, Adidas later expanded its production operations in leisure and apparel sector with the logo of adidas appearing on each product.
The shape of 3 stripes on the Adidas Logo represents mountain, pointing out towards the challenges that are seen ahead and goals that can be achieved.

Macdonald

The famous Golden Arches in McDonalds logo represent style, significance and a strong corporate identity. It was created by Jim Schindler in 1962 and the idea was first introduced by Dick and Mac McDonald as arch shaped signs on the sides of their then ‘walk-up hamburger stand’. From an angle, those arches looked like the letter “M” and thus, were incorporated in the McDonalds logo as a merger of the two golden arches together. The “McDonald’s” name was later added to the McDonalds logo in 1968. While the physical arches were dropped out from all the restaurants’ building design, The Golden Arches have remained in the McDonalds logo, and have branded the company.

Ferrari

The Prancing Horse was a symbol used by Count Francesco Baracca, who was an ace fighter pilot of Italian Air Force during World War 1. He died young, fighting fearlessly. He was shot down after 34 dual and team victories.
Count Francesco Baracca used the Prancing Horse symbol at the sides of his plane. On June 17, 1923 Enzo Ferrari met Baracca’s mother Countess Paolina, after winning a race at Savio track in Ravenna.
Countess Paolina suggested that Enzo should use the symbol of prancing horse, as it would bring good luck. It was not until 1940, that Enzo Ferrari began to use the symbol, which later on became the part of the world famous Ferrari logo.

Google

The Google logo is a very simple logo made up of a simple font and some basic colors. It seems almost amateurish. The simplicity of the logo could possible represent the simplicity of the search engine. There are numerous debates/discussions on the web about the google logo. One discussion centered around the two O's in Google, representing infinity.
Every once in a while, you will see the Google logo change to represent a current topic e.g The Olympics, World Cup etc. These logos are called Google doodles. The doodles are currently created by Dennis Hwang and he has created over 150 doodles since he started working at Google. Apparently, the first doodle was produced by the founders Larry and Sergey. The logo was created when they attended the Burning Man festival in summer 1999. They put a little stick figure on the home page logo in case the site crashed and someone wanted to know why nobody was answering the phone.