Logo Design Evolution of Famous Brands (Canon logo)

Today, the Canon logo, with its vivid red color, is familiar to people around the world. However, the logo underwent a number of changes before reaching its present form.

Engraving using the image of Kwanon attached to
the "Kwanon" prototype as a motif.

In 1933, when Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory was established, the name given to cameras manufactured on a trial basis at the time was Kwanon. This title reflected the benevolence of Kwanon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, and embodied the Company's vision of creating the best cameras in the world. The logo included the word with an image of "Kwanon with 1,000 Arms" and flames.

When the Company sought to begin full-scale marketing, it needed a brand name that would be accepted by people worldwide. From this standpoint, in 1935 the name Canon was registered as the official trademark. The word Canon has a number of meanings, including scriptures, criterion and standard. The trademark was therefore worthy of a company involved with precision equipment, where accuracy is fundamentally important. It also embodied the Company's desire to meet world-class criteria and industry standards. And since Canon and Kwanon had similar pronunciations, the transition went smoothly.

Canon Logo evolution over the years.

A designer specializing in advertising created the original Canon logo in 1935. The "C" was unique in that its top end curved inward, ending in a sharp point. This style of typeface did not then exist in Europe or North America. The Canon name and logo were created to reflect the Company's global perspectives, which it adopted right from the beginning of its history.

Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory underwent several name changes before the adoption of Canon Camera Co., Inc., in 1947. This change was significant in that Canon brand and company names were unified for the first time in its history. Several versions of the logo were also used, until a unified version was created in 1953. After further refinements, the logo used today was perfected in 1955. It has remained unchanged for nearly half a century.

Logo Design Evolution of Famous Brands Part 1

Few logo that evolved with time. Logo designing and branding have their own stories to tell and rumors make them more interesting.

Adobe.

In 1982, forty-something programmers John Warnock and Charles Geschke quit their work at Xerox to start a software company. They named it Adobe, after a creek that ran behind Warnock's home. Their first focus was to create PostScript, a programming language used in desktop publishing.
When Adobe was young, Warnock and Geschke did everything they could to save money. They asked family and friends to help out: Geschke's 80-year-old father stained lumber for shelving, and Warnock's wife Marva designed Adobe's first logo.


Apple.

In 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs ("the two Steves") designed and built a homemade computer, the Apple I. As Wozniak was working for Hewlett Packard at the time, they offered it to HP first, but they were turned down. The two Steves had to sell some of their prized possessions (Wozniak sold his beloved programmable HP calculator and Jobs sold his old Volkswagen mini bus) to finance the making of the Apple I motherboards.
Later that year, Wozniak created the next generation machine: Apple ][ prototype. They offered it to Commodore, and got turned down again. But things soon started to look up for Apple, and the company began to gain customers with its computers.
The first Apple logo was a complex picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. The logo was inscribed: "Newton ... A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought ... Alone." It was designed by Ronald Wayne, who along with Wozniak and Jobs, actually founded Apple Computer. In 1976, after only working for two weeks at Apple, Wayne relinquished his stock (10% of the company) for a one-time payment of $800 because he thought Apple was too risky! (Had he kept it, Wayne's stock would be worth billions!)
Jobs thought that the overly complex logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999.
Rumor has it that the bite on the Apple logo was a nod to Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple. Janoff, however, said in an interview that though he was mindful of the "byte/bite" pun (Apple's slogan back then: "Byte into an Apple"), he designed the logo as such to "prevent the apple from looking like a cherry tomato." (Source)
In 1998, supposedly at the insistence of Jobs, who had just returned to the company, Apple replaced the rainbow logo ("the most expensive bloody logo ever designed" said Apple President Mike Scott) with a modern-looking, monochrome logo.

Boeing.

Boeing Before and after merger with McDonnell Douglas.


Alfa Romeo.

The logo is that Romano Cattaneo was given the task to come up with a badge for the then new company, in 1910. While waiting for a train at Piazza Castello in Milan, he gained inspiration from the Visconti family’s coat of arms displayed on a door. It features a “biscione” which is a serpent eating a human child.  It reportedly terrified the local populous of Milan in the early part of the 5th century A.D. It has been said that the human being eaten is a Moor, during the Crusades. If that’s the case, who or what does the serpent symbolize?

Aston Martin.

Aston Martin was founded in 1914 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford and the brand’s name is a merging between the hill-climb circuit named Aston Hill and Lionel’s surname, Martin.
Before the company was born, Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford worked for the car company Singer and raced cars at hill climbing and racing events, such as the Aston Hill, in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire. Then, the duo decided it was time to make their own cars and have their own car company, which they established in 1914 in Kensington. Their first car came out the following year.
 The history of the Aston Martin logo is actually unclear. The emblem is currently composed by a pair of white wings, outlined by a black line, with the words “Aston Martin” in white over a green rectangle on top of the wings. In the logo, the rectangle is in plain white, instead of green, and the words “Aston Martin” are repeated and placed underneath the drawing. However, it hasn’t always been that way since the company was formed.

Indeed, there have been quite a few different symbols that represented the British car brand over the decades, since it opened in 1916. The first one, created in 1920, was basically a merging of the letters ‘A’ and ‘M’ in black, surrounded by a black double-line circle. In 1932, Aston Martin’s symbol was completely reformulated, now consisting on the brand’s name written over a pair of wings that were inspired by Bentley’s and meant to suggest speed. The drawing is in black over white.

A few years later, the 1932 symbol was somewhat redesigned in order to keep up with contemporary tastes but the drawing’s elements remained the same. In 1947, after David Brown took over the automaker, the logo was improved yet again and now included the name “David Brown” above the words “Aston Martin”, which were now sustained by a black rectangle. The wings remained as the symbol’s background. The “David Brown” name would be removed in the 1970’s when the company was no longer on this sir’s hands.

Audi.

The four rings in the Audi logo represent the four companies of the Auto-Union consortium of 1932 - DKW, Horch, Wanderer, and Audi.
The Audi name (latin for 'Hear!') disappeared after WWII, but was revived in1965

Four 1939 companies developed into today's rings

BMW.
Until recently the story behind the BMW logo was linked with the aircraft engines. It was believed that it is a stylized representation of an airplane propeller spinning against the clear blue sky. But it seems that the origins of the BMW logo have a totally different explanation. Find out the truth behind the BMW logo.

The BMW Roundel is one of the world's most recognized and revered commercial symbols. In July 1917 Franz Josef Popp registered the name Bayerische Motoren Werke, thus distancing the new company from the Rapp Motoren Werke. This was a necessary move if the new company was to find new clients and prosper. The name was registered but as yet there was no new logo…It was on 5 October 1917 that the BMW trademark was registered with the Imperial Trade Mark Roll under No. 221388. It featured the circular design of the Rapp logo but with the letters BMW at the top of the outer ring. The inner featured quadrants in the Bavarian Free State colors of blue and white - but in the opposed order - as it was illegal to use national symbols in a commercial trademark.
The design was not in any way connected with aircraft engines or propellers. The idea that the blue and white had anything to do with spinning propellers comes from a 1929 advertisement, which featured aircraft with the image of the Roundel in the rotating propellers. This advertisement came at the beginning of the Great Depression, which coincided with BMW acquiring the license to build Pratt & Whitney radial aircraft engines. The idea of the spinning propellers was given greater credence in an article by Wilhelm Farrenkopf in a BMW journal of 1942. This also featured an image of an aircraft with a spinning Roundel. These were powerful images and the legend of the spinning propeller was born. The logo was registered on 5 October but it was in limited use prior to this date. On 1 October 1917 Franz Josef Popp was given a certificate confirming his appointment as General Manager and it was adorned with the now familiar BMW Roundel. The basic structure of the Roundel has remained the same over 90 years but there have been subtle changes.
In the original design the lettering and outline was in gold, but by the time the first BMW motorcycle - the R 32 - was released in1923 it had changed slightly. The letters were still in gold but the font was bolder and letters closer together. This was the style that was submitted to the German Register of Trade Marks in 1933, and the international register of trademarks in 1934. This did not however stop various versions being used. One of the early BMW advertisements using the logo was in 1918 with the 'Falling Roundels', this was a positioning advertisement that was designed to establish the brand and give an indication to its current and future products. Subsequent advertisements, posters and even cars and motorcycles also featured many styles of Roundel.
The proportions changed, the shade of blue used, and the lettering could be in gold, white or silver with serif or sans-serif fonts in different sizes. There appears to be no reason for this variance except for product designers and marketing and communication staff using personal choice depending on application. Through the 1950s there was a more concerted effort to standardize the Roundel. The use of white lettering was now standard and when used on cars and motorcycles it was silver. By the1960s the serif font was replaced by sans-serif, and this was used on all motorcycles by 1966. There was a subsequent change to a slightly bolder font and this has remained as the standard Roundel. There was flirtation with a 'MotorsportRoundel' in the early 1970s and '80s which had the standard logo surrounded by the BMW Motorsport colors. In 1997 BMW moved to having the Roundel depicted in 3-D when used in the printed form. This gives the Roundel a new bolder and dynamic look. The BMW Roundel is now ranked in the top ten of the world's most recognized commercial logos and is an iconic symbol in its own right. The original design, in its simplicity and symbolism has stood the test of time.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer: The BMW and Mercedes-Benz alliance

 Do you know?
The main thing to know about this screw on cloisonné emblems is not to over tighten them. This will distort the base metal and will crack the cloisonné enamel. A rubber gasket is mounted between the emblem and metal to help cushion it. A properly tightened screw can almost be turned with a strong thumbnail. The screw slots aren’t "aligned" because they were left where they came to the proper tension. Many have been cracked because the installer wanted to be sure they stayed on or wanted the slots to be lined up and went a bit too far. Some of the tank surfaces are not flat to start with. They must have a curved emblem to fit. The enamel emblem will not conform (flex) to fit a curved surface. You will ruin them.
The BMW logo is a registered trademark of the BMW Corporation. The blue-and-white circular BMW logo is still used today.

Source: bmwblog, worldofbmw

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Logo Design

A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition. Logos are either purely graphic (symbols/icons) or are composed of the name of the organization (a logotype or wordmark).
In the days of hot metal typesetting, a logotype was a uniquely set and arranged typeface or colophon. At the level of mass communication and in common usage a company's logo is today often synonymous with its trademark or brand.^[1]

History

Three logos: LibreOffice, IBM by Paul Rand and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.

Numerous inventions and techniques have contributed to the contemporary logo, including cylinder seals (c.2300 BCE), coins (c.600 BCE),^[2][3] trans-cultural diffusion of logographic languages, coats of arms,^[4] watermarks,^[5] silver hallmarks and the development of printing technology.
As the industrial revolution converted western societies from agrarian to industrial in the 18th and 19th centuries, photography and lithography contributed to the boom of an advertising industry that integrated typography and imagery together on the page.^[6] Simultaneously, typography itself was undergoing a revolution of form and expression that expanded beyond the modest, serif typefaces used in books, to bold, ornamental typefaces used on broadsheet posters.^[7]
The arts were expanding in purpose—from expression and decoration of an artistic, storytelling nature, to a differentiation of brands and products that the growing middle classes were consuming. Consultancies and trades-groups in the commercial arts were growing and organizing; by 1890 the US had 700 lithographic printing firms employing more than 8,000 people.^[8] Artistic credit tended to be assigned to the lithographic company, as opposed to the individual artists.


Innovators in the visual arts and lithographic process—such as French printing firm Rouchon in the 1840s, Joseph Morse of New York in the 1850s, Frederick Walker of England in the 1870s, and Jules Chéret of France in the 1870s—developed an illustrative style that went beyond tonal, representational art to figurative imagery with sections of bright, flat colors.^[8] Playful children’s books, authoritative newspapers, and conversational periodicals developed their own visual and editorial styles for unique, expanding audiences. As printing costs decreased, literacy rates increased, and visual styles changed, the Victorian decorative arts lead to an expansion of typographic styles and methods of representing businesses.^[9]

A coin from early 6th century BC Lydia bearing the head of a roaring lion with sun rays

The First logo to be trademarked was the Bass red triangle in 1876

The Arts and Crafts Movement of late-19th century, partially in response to the excesses of Victorian typography, aimed to restore an honest sense of craftsmanship to the mass-produced goods of the era.^[10] A renewal of interest in craftsmanship and quality also provided the artists and companies with a greater interest in credit, leading to the creation of unique logos and marks.
By the 1950s, Modernism had shed its roots as an avant-garde artistic movement in Europe to become an international, commercialized movement with adherents in the United States and elsewhere. The visual simplicity and conceptual clarity that were the hallmarks of Modernism as an artistic movement formed a powerful toolset for a new generation of graphic designers whose logos embodied Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s dictum, "Less is more." Modernist-inspired logos proved successful in the era of mass visual communication ushered in by television, improvements in printing technology, and digital innovations.

Contemporary logos

Red Cross and Red Crescent emblems

The current era of logo design began in the 1870s with the first abstract logo, the Bass red triangle. Today there are many corporations, products, brands, services, agencies and other entities using an ideogram (sign, icon) or an emblem (symbol) or a combination of sign and emblem as a logo. As a result, only a few of the thousands of ideograms people see are recognized without a name. An effective logo may consist of both an ideogram and the company name (logotype) to emphasize the name over the graphic, and employ a unique design via the use of letters, colors, and additional graphic elements.
Ideograms and symbols may be more effective than written names (logotypes), especially for logos translated into many alphabets in increasingly globalized markets. For instance, a name in the Arabic language would be of little help in most European markets. By contrast, ideograms keep the general proprietary nature of the product in both markets. In non-profit areas, the Red Cross (known also as Red Crescent in Muslim countries and Red Star of David in Israel) is an example of a well known emblem that does not need an accompanying name. The red cross and red crescent are among the best recognized symbols in the world. On their own, they signify protection of medical personnel in war time, dating back 150 years. They also signify the protection of victims of armed conflict and those who try to help them. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and their Federation as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross include these symbols in their logos.
Branding aims to facilitate cross-language marketing. The Coca-Cola logo can be identified in any language because of its standard color and well known "ribbon wave" design.

Logo design

The Coca-Cola logo is identifiable in other languages, here written in Cyrillic.

Logo design is an important area of graphic design, and one of the most difficult to perfect. The logo (ideogram), is the image embodying an organization. Because logos are meant to represent companies' brands or corporate identities and foster their immediate customer recognition, it is counterproductive to frequently redesign logos.
Color is considered important to brand recognition, but it should not be an integral component to the logo design, which could conflict with its functionality. Some colors are formed/associated with certain emotions that the designer wants to convey. For instance loud primary colors, such as red, are meant to attract the attention of drivers on highways are appropriate for companies that require such attention. In the United States red, white, and blue are often used in logos for companies that want to project patriotic feelings. Green is often associated with the health and hygiene sector, and light blue or silver is often used to reflect diet foods. For other brands, more subdued tones and lower saturation can communicate reliability, quality, relaxation, or other traits.
The logo design profession has substantially increased in numbers over the years since the rise of the Modernist movement in the United States in the 1950s.^[11] Three designers are widely^[12] considered the pioneers of that movement and of logo and corporate identity design: The first is Chermayeff & Geismar,^[13] which is the firm responsible for a large number of iconic logos, such as Chase Bank (1964), Mobil Oil (1965), PBS (1984), NBC (1986), National Geographic (2003) and others. Due to the simplicity and boldness of their designs, many of their earlier logos are still in use today. The firm recently designed logos for the Library of Congress and the fashion brand Armani Exchange. Another pioneer of corporate identity design is Paul Rand,^[14] who was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design. He designed many posters and corporate identities, including the logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC. The third pioneer of corporate identity design is Saul Bass.^[15] Bass was responsible for several recognizable logos in North America, including both the Bell Telephone logo (1969) and successor AT&T Corporation globe (1983). Other well-known designs were Continental Airlines (1968), Dixie (1969), and United Way (1972). Later, he would produce logos for a number of Japanese companies as well. Charmayeff, Rand and Bass all died in 1996.

Logo design process

Designing a good logo is not a simple task and requires a lot of involvement from the marketing team and the design agency (if outsourced). It requires clear idea about the concept and values of the brand as well as understanding of the consumer or target group as marketers call. Broad step in logo design process would be formulating concept, doing initial sketch, finalizing the logo concept, deciding the theme colors and format.

Dynamic logos

In 1898 the French tire manufacturer Michelin introduced the Michelin Man, a cartoon figure presented in many different contexts, such as eating, drinking and playing sports.
 By the early 21st century, large corporations such as MTV, Google, Morton Salt and Saks Fifth Avenue had adopted dynamic logos that change over time from setting to setting.^[16]

Internet-compatible logos

A company that use logotypes (wordmarks) may desire a logo that matches the firm's Internet Address. For short logotypes consisting of two or three characters, multiple companies are found to employ the same letters. A "CA" logo, for example, is used by the French Bank Credit Agricole, the Dutch Clothing Retailer C&A and the US Software Corporation CA Technologies, but only one can have the internet domain name CA.com.

In today's interface adaptive world, the use of a logo will be formatted and re-formatted from large monitors to small handheld devices. With the constant size change and re-formatting, logo designers are shifting to a more bold and simple approach, with heavy lines and shapes, and solid colors. This reduces the confusion when mingled with other logos in tight spaces and when scaled between mediums.

Design protection

Coca-Cola logo

Logos and their design may be protected by copyright, via various Intellectual Property organisations worldwide which make available application procedures to register a design to give it protection at law. For example in the UK, the Intellectual Property Office (United Kingdom)^[17] govern registered desgins, patents and trademarks. Ordinarily the trademark registration will not 'make claim' to colours used, meaning it is the visual design that will be protected, even if it is reproduced in a variety of other colours or backgrounds.

Sports

For many teams, a logo is an important way to recognize a team's history and can intimidate opponents. For certain teams, the logo and colour scheme are synonymous with the team's players. For example; the Toronto Maple Leafs, Cleveland Indians, or New York Yankees all have highly recognizable logos that can be recognized by nearly any fan of the respective sport.