4 classic logo designs from marketing history
Michelin Man: The Inflatable Poster Boy
Michelin Man, also known as Bibendum. is one of the world’s oldest trademarks. He was brought to life in 1898 by French artist O’Gallup in a series of extraordinary marketing posters featuring a rotund, cigar chomping Bibendum in a variety of outlandish situations.
In O’Gallup’s first poster, Bibendum raises a glass of champagne laced with rusty nails and broken glass, declaring a toast: ‘To Your Good Health’. It is a bizarre image, but an explanation of sorts is provided by the marketing slogan: The Michelin Tyre Drinks up Obstacles. Bibendum’s antics continue in 1935 with a short animation The birth of Bibendum. This strange and beautiful cartoon shows Michelin Man being created from a stack of tyres. He then inflates himself to enormous proportions, trashes the local town and floats into outer space where he hitches a ride back to earth on a passing comet.
Why is Michelin Man made of white tyres? Very early tyres were light in colour, it was only in 1912 that carbon black was introduced to the manufacturing process, by which time Bibendum was a well established marketing mascot. The years have been kind to Bibendum, and he is now a friendlier, slimmed down version of his former self.
Coca-Cola: Red, White and You
Nothing has more staying power than the Coca Cola logo with its timeless cursive lettering, familiar the world over since 1887. The logo uses Spencerian script, a very popular style in 19th Century America, and has changed very little over the years. The early logo incorporated the word “Trademark” in the first C swirl, but by 1941 this had disappeared. 1969 saw the appearance of the “Dynamic Ribbon”, which was redesigned in 2002 with the addition of a narrow yellow band, only to be simplified back to basics in 2005.
The Evolution of a Mermaid
The story of the enigmatic Starbucks Siren goes back to 1971 when Starbucks set up its first Coffee Shop on the Seattle waterfront. Looking for a logo to reflect the marine theme of their home city, the founders explored pictures in old seafaring books, eventually settling on a Norse woodcut of a two-tailed mermaid. The seductive siren certainly drew the eye, but a problem arose when it came time for the logo to be scaled up. A huge, naked mermaid displayed on the side of delivery trucks didn’t quite fit the brand image, and so she underwent a makeover. Her new hairdo provided cover from strategically placed long locks, and she evolved into the demure Starbucks Siren we know today.
The 3-Stripes logo
The Adidas brand was founded in the 1940s by German entrepreneur Adi Dassler. In a stroke of marketing genius he contracted his own name to coin the brandname Adidas, and registered a shoe incorporating the soon-to-be iconic 3-stripes, all on the same day in August 1949. The Adidas logo has undergone several transformations over years, shape-shifting from parallel lines to trefoil to mountain to globe, but the 3-stripes remain constant. The current logo symbolises the challenge of reaching the heights of your goals and ambition.
Why do you need a branding strategy?
How Wearing a Grey T-shirt can Get People Talking
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become one of the most recognised figures of modern times. A young, dynamic, entrepreneur with the whole world at his feet, dressed in that signature grey t-shirt, occasionally set off by a fetching zip-up hoodie.
When asked about his resolute attachment to the grey t-shirt at a recent Q&A session, his response was sober and cautious. He assured the audience that he didn’t have energy to waste on anything as frivolous as choosing what to wear in the morning – he needs all his energy to devote to his work.
But Robin Wight from the Communications Group Engine, is not convinced. He thinks that Zuckerberg’s uniform of choice points to one thing: Branding Strategy. “Brands need to show continuity, and Mark Zuckerberg is very much part of the Facebook brand,” he says. So, like Steve Jobs before him, Mark Zuckerberg has cannily adopted a consistent dress code in order to promote his brand.
Branding is Communication
The grey t-shirt uniform is just one example of how there is more to branding than simply designing a corporate logo and sticking it on everything. An effective branding strategy will help you connect with your customers and make your business grow. Once your strategy is in place, it can be put straight to work, pulling in customers and keeping them loyal.
Three Reasons for Developing a Branding Strategy
1. Focus
The day-to-day responsibilities of setting up and running a business will inevitably place many demands on your time and energy. Somewhere along the way there is a good chance that you will become swept up in it all and lose sight of the bigger picture. Taking a step back to focus on the key messages you need to communicate to your customers can revitalise your business and really pay dividends.
2. Get yourself noticed
Your brand is what sets you apart from your competitors. Customers will soon get to know your business through your branding, and if you get it right they will learn to pick you out from the competition, just as a familiar face stands out from the crowd.
3. Connect with your core customers and attract new ones
Once you have tested your strategy and know that it’s working, it’s important to keep your branding solid and consistent to ensure that it becomes established. Pay attention to details such as logo placement, tag line, colour scheme and choice of font.
As you gain confidence in your branding strategy, you will be able to use it in new ways to reach new customers For example, social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest can be used to spread the word about what your business has to offer. If the whole concept of social media leaves you bewildered, the Dummies Cheat Sheet: Using Social Media to Promote your Business is a good place to start.
Developing your branding strategy can be fun and stimulating way to grow your business. Get it right and it will deliver for you in the long run… and don’t worry, it won’t mean you have to fill your wardrobe with grey T-shirts.
Branding tips for beginners: where to start
Ever heard of BackRub? It was the early name of a search engine started in the 1990s, and it was renamed Google by its founders in 1997. It is a good reminder that a name and an identity matter from the start. If you run a small business, branding can sound like something for big companies with big budgets. These branding tips for beginners show why it deserves a place on your list, and our branding services are there when you want help with it.
Your business already has a brand
Branding is reputation. Whether or not you have thought about it, your customers already have an impression of you, formed by how you look, sound and behave. If you have worked to build that reputation, branding matters to you. It is how you earn trust, keep customers coming back and attract new ones. Write a short brand plan, and involve your team, because they are part of the brand every day.
Check every first impression
First impressions count. Think about the routes by which people find you. They might walk in, but it is more likely they will find you through your website, a Google Business Profile, social media or a review site. List every way a customer first meets your business and make sure each one reflects the brand you want. Each of these meetings is a touchpoint, and together they make up your brand.
Define what makes you different
Distinctive branding sets you apart and encourages loyalty. Start with your logo, since customers will come to know you through it. It should be distinctive, attractive and professional. Try writing a short line that captures what your business stands for, even if you never use it publicly. Define your values too. When they match your customers’ values, you build an emotional connection that brings repeat custom and word of mouth. Our guide to briefing a branding agency shows how to put this into words.
Be consistent
Once your brand is working, do not be tempted to keep changing it. Use the same logo, colours, fonts and tone of voice everywhere, from your signage to your social media. Successful branding takes time, so give it room to grow.
Ready to build a brand that customers remember? Get in touch with Design Minds or email info@designminds.ie.
Web usability tips for small business websites
Web usability is a clunky phrase for ease of use. Get it right and visitors trust your business, because the site makes them feel capable and in control. Get it wrong and that trust drains away as they struggle to find a phone number or place an order. Here are four web usability tips every small business can apply, whether you are building a new website or improving the one you have.
Start with what your visitors need to do
Imagine you are a customer arriving for the first time. What are you looking for? It might be simple, such as opening hours or a contact number, or more involved, such as booking or buying. Write a checklist of the things visitors must be able to do quickly, and design the site around that list. Usability begins with understanding your audience.
Keep it simple, familiar and uncluttered
Clear links and obvious routes to key content make visitors feel in control. Do not try to be too clever. Follow conventions people already know, such as a logo that links home, a menu where they expect it and links that look like links. Visitors scan pages in seconds, so a small frustration is often enough to send them elsewhere. Resist flashing banners, unreadable text over busy backgrounds and pop-ups that get in the way. People quickly learn to ignore visual noise, so it rarely achieves what you hope.
Design for phones and thumbs
Many visitors will arrive on a mobile, and a phone relies on touch, not a mouse pointer. Small, tightly packed buttons cause accidental taps and a lot of irritation. Make tap targets generous, keep text readable without zooming and make sure forms are easy to complete. Good contrast, clear headings and keyboard-friendly navigation help everyone, and they are part of meeting accessibility expectations. Our post on website accessibility for Irish small businesses covers this in more detail.
Test early and test often
A site that works on your own laptop may not work for everyone. Try it on different phones, tablets and browsers, and ask people who have never seen it to complete real tasks. Their feedback is the cheapest way to put things right. Start testing during design and keep going until launch.
Want a website that is easy for your customers to use? Get in touch with Design Minds or email info@designminds.ie.
What your font says about you
Meet Cracked Johnnie. He’s a bit of an animal, wild and anarchic. And here’s Moonbeam, soft and gentle with a hint of quiet sophistication. Then there’s Little Lord Fontleroy, fancy and high falutin’ just as you’d expect.
The Fonts You Choose are like the Company You Keep.
Fonts really are like people, they each have their own individual style and spirit. So, Cracked Johnnie would go down a storm at your upcoming mad bash, but you probably wouldn’t want him around when you’re dining with your in-laws. Try leaving Little Lord Fontleroy at the local high school, and he’d be having his head flushed in the toilet during the very first break time.
There are more than 100,000 fonts to choose from – this gives you a massive amount of artistic freedom, but such a dizzying multitude can soon send you screwball. When it comes to selecting a particular font, it’s worth putting some thought into the impression you want to make on your target audience. For example, the professional networking site LinkedIn has based its logo on the very business-like, no nonsense font Myriad Bold, whereas the Twitter logo is based on the fun and friendly Pico Alphabet.
It might also help to think about fonts as belonging to different families. So for a nostalgic feel, you could choose a font from the Retro family; for an edgy mood, go for a Graffiti font, and if you want a combative flavour, try an Military font.
How Your Font Could be a Tattle-Tale
In the same way that some companies hire a graphologist to analyse handwriting to determine the personality and character traits of the writer, it is now likely that your choice of fonts will also come under scrutiny. Most word processing applications have a super safe go-to font such as Times New Roman or Arial, but what message are you giving if you stick with such a font? You may feel that it gives a dependable air of integrity, on the other hand it could give the impression that you are boring, stuffy and timid. Oh, and a word about Cambria, the post-2007 Microsoft go-to font. Stick with Cambria and you’re telling the world that you are oblivious to the whole concept of font selection and you are simply hostage to the default.
Cracked Johnnie on your CV will send a very definite message about you to your potential employer, just as a obituary in Comic Sans is not likely to go down well with the bereaved. There is a time and a place for unbridled creativity, you also need to know when it’s best to rein it in and tone things down.
Get to Know Your Fonts
With so many fonts out there, it’s no wonder that choice of font has become a whole art form in its own right. Try getting to know your fonts – test them out, see how they behave, give them space to play, be adventurous. Go on, have a blast!
5 logo design tips for Irish small businesses
Your logo is the face of your business. It turns up on your website, your invoices, your van and your social profiles, often before anyone has spoken to you. Whether you are starting out or replacing something that has never quite worked, these five tips from our logo design studio in Dublin will help you get a mark that earns its keep.
1. Start with your audience, not your taste
Before any sketching, be clear about who the logo has to win over. A logo aimed at procurement managers in large organisations needs a different tone from one aimed at families or first-time buyers. Aim at the right people and the logo builds trust; aim at yourself and it may only impress you.
2. Choose colours and type deliberately
Colour and typeface carry meaning before a word is read. A heavy, geometric typeface feels solid and modern; a fine serif feels established and considered. Check what your competitors use, so you stand apart rather than blend in. We have written more on choosing colours for your logo.
3. Be distinctive, not decorated
Simple is good, but safe is not the same as simple. A logo that plays it too safe ends up looking like everyone else’s. The aim is one clear idea, executed well, that people can recognise and remember. Adding more detail rarely helps; finding the right idea does.
4. Make it work at every size
Your logo will appear as a tiny social media icon and possibly across the side of a building. Test it at very small sizes, in a single colour and reversed out of a dark background. If it fails any of those, fix it at design stage, not after the stationery and signage have been made.
5. Test it with real people
Show the shortlisted designs to people who match your customers, not just friends and colleagues. Ask what the logo suggests about the business, not whether they like it. Useful feedback at this stage is cheap; changing a logo after launch is not.
A good logo is the start of a brand identity, not the whole of it. If you are weighing up the investment, our guide to what a logo designer costs in Ireland sets out what to expect.
Ready to talk about your logo? Get in touch at designminds.ie/contact or email info@designminds.ie.
Seven of the worst logo designs
It can all go so horribly wrong. From the merely banal or baffling to the humongous bloopers; pitfalls abound. Some mistakes are easily made and easy to put right at the design stage. Others… well, let’s just say you have to really go the extra mile to blow it that badly.
Logo no-no’s
And so here is a choice selection of logo no-no’s for you to consider. Not all mistakes are glaringly obvious, and you might even find some of them to your liking, but that’s the colourful world logo design for you. Enjoy!
1. London 2012
Who can forget the vivid, pulsating in-your-face arrival of the London 2012 logo. From the moment it bounced sickeningly onto our screens and into our national psyche it came in for a good kicking. A headline in the Telegraph declared it ‘puerile’, even the Guardian snickered up its sleeve at the resemblance of Lisa Simpson giving a blow job. And when the Iranians threatened to pull out because they saw the word “Zion”, you’d think the designers would go quietly back to the drawing board. But love it or loathe it, the London 2012 logo stayed the course and has become one of the classic icons of recent years.
2. Kids Exchange
This one is rather unfortunate. It’s a good example of something that should have been picked up at the design stage. Running the words ‘Kids Exchange’ together like that was a serious error of judgement. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?
3. Junior Jazz
Now this one takes a bit of imagination, but once you’ve noticed the naked female torso you can’t see it any other way. Given the nature of the organisation, it’s very unlikely that the illusion is deliberate. Oops!
4. Anthony Byrne
Another dubious symbol that someone should have spotted during the prototype stage. Maybe someone did see it but decided to keep schtum. It’s a bit of a balls up in any case.
5. The misplaced apostrophe
We all know what happens when an apostrophe is set out of place – it can make a huge difference to a sentence and to the way we read words. Really you’d have thought that a company like Stella Artoiswould know better.
6. Too much information
Sometimes an appealing logo design can be ruined by the addition of too much text. This Martial Arts Centre has managed to cram the full name of the business and list its services all in one little logo. Is that really a good idea? Your message should be clear, concise and simple – not require your customers to turn their heads 380 degrees to read your logo.
7. Choose your font wisely
You think you’re saying one thing, but choose the wrong font and your message can take on a whole new meaning. This is what we mean when we say that your logo should be readable both when it’s small and when it’s blown up. See examples of all sizes to see how the text works or you’ll end up making a faux pas yourself, just like the Wig and Pen pub did.
Speaking of fonts, there is one particular font to be avoided at all costs. Take a look at these famous logos changed to Comic Sans. Eww!
So if you think that designing your own logo is a doddle, you’d better think again. The art of logo design requires a combination of technical skill and creative flair. You will want your logo to be memorable for all the right reasons so it’s worth taking the time and trouble to get it right. Invest in a professional designer with a track record in successful logo design to create a logo that will make you proud.
Tweaking logos: small changes that worked (and some that didn’t)
Whenever a large corporation makes even the tiniest of tweaks to its logo, there’s one thing you can guarantee – it won’t go unnoticed. There is an army of eagle-eyed logo spotters out there, poised to pounce, scrutinise and pronounce judgement. Here are five logo changes and the reactions they have provoked from the logo watchers.
Agghh! Change it Back!
To mark its transition from American chocolate maker to global confectionery giant, Hershey’s announced with great fanfare the unveiling of a new logo. From printed material and websites to the design of offices and shops, this new “visual identity system” would be rolled out all the way. At first glance the changes to the logo aren’t all that earth shattering – “Hershey’s” shortened to “Hershey” and a modern flat-design makeover – but it is the updated Kisses emblem that really catches the eye. Stripped of its enticing silver wrapper and pared down to a simple, flat shape, the new symbol bears a striking resemblance to a certain unpleasant emoji. Verdict from logo watchers? Eww!
Small Change, Big Difference
Big news: Black and Decker has lost its nut. This iconic brand image, familiar to DIYers for nearly 100 years, has been dropped. Along with the nut, the robust ampersand has also gone, to be replaced by an awkward looking + sign. Each individual change might not seem much, but the overall effect is huge. Online reaction to the Black and Decker logo has not been kind – vanilla, generic, weak and cheap. Oh dear.
No Flocking the Bird
In 2012 the top brass at Twitter made an announcement: No longer did they see a place for text in their logo. Henceforth the bird alone would stand as the universal symbol of Twitter. In a game of spot the difference, logo watchers pinpointed the most significant change to the Twitter bird: Its punk hairdo had been given the chop. Along with the new bird came a string of ‘usage guidelines’, including ‘don’t flock the bird with other birds’ and ‘don’t anthropomorphize the bird’. This provoked the headline Twitter goes Trademark Crazy from New Statesman, who then immediately set out to break the rules by publishing a picture of the Twitter bird on a skateboard.
Panda Express
A familiar sight in the shopping malls and airport food courts of the United States, fast-food chain Panda Express recently gave its logo a little tweak. The distinctive panda symbol remains unchanged, but a softer font, toned-down red and the change of wording from ‘Gourmet Chinese Food’ to ‘Chinese Kitchen’ has given a friendlier feel to the overall logo. Thumbs up for Panda Express from the logo watchers.
and finally…
Visa
For over 55 years, Visa has enjoyed one of the most enduring and recognisable logos the world over. Throughout that time the font has remained constant and the colour scheme hardly altered, but every so often Visa refreshes the brand image with a slight shift in detail. The latest makeover sees Visa losing its yellow flick and turning a darker shade of blue with a subtle gradient. The verdict: Fine… but why?
