10 ms·
The Makings of a Great Logo
- Mithaldu 12y agoI wonder what possessed them to choose a domain name that most closely evokes a medical condition.
- you_bloody_win 12y agoYou win
- shasta 12y agoI had noticed neither that the arrow in Amazon's logo points from A to Z nor that the arrow resembles a smile. My guess is that the only competitive advantage resulting from such design flourishes is the free press you get from designers discussing your logo.
- dag11 12y agoWhile I never noticed it pointing A->Z, I did always recognize it as a smile. I guess it depends on your perspective.
- arkonaut 12y agoDon't know how you'd quantify this, but I imagine people have a subliminal response to the smile whether they know they see it or not. Like pleasant chord construction in music. I've also heard it's the reason watches in magazines are always set to a time around 10:10 or 2:50 to make it seem like a smiling face.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jeorgun 12y agoI'd never consciously noticed the smile before, but now that I do I find it frankly unsettling (something like http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire1/b1bd605b2f1f69275d4f367762d7af2d1379115050_large.jpg http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire1/b1bd605b2f1f69275d4f... ). I wonder if the subconscious mind is less discerning when it comes to smiles, or if I'm just reading it weirdly?
- cschmidt 12y agoHave you ever noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo? I'm always surprised how few people have "seen" it. Go look now: https://www.google.com/#q=fedex+logo https://www.google.com/#q=fedex+logo if you don't know what I'm talking about
- Deinos 12y agoCan't believe I never caught that until now... and now I can't "unsee" it. Impressive.
- yitchelle 12y agoWhoa, that is so well done that it is almost subliminal.
- mathattack 12y agoWow. I wonder if there is any subliminal power to the FedEx and Amazon arrows. Shouldn't be too hard to AB test, which makes me think it was deliberate.
- kefs 12y agoHere's a good write-up on the Fedex logo.. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671067/the-story-behind-the-famous-fedex-logo-and-why-it-works http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671067/the-story-behind-the-fam...
- mathattack 12y agoVery interesting. Thank you for sharing! They're a very early adopter of technology enabled supply chain integration, so it's interesting to see where else they are on the leading edge.
- Swizec 12y agoNo matter how many times people show me that arrow, I just cannot see it. Maybe I'm a visual idiot.
- StefanKarpinski 12y agoCompletely agree that the Amazon logo is a pretty questionable example of a "great logo" and the story doesn't really improve it. I'm increasingly often thinking that the Twitter logo is genius. That little bird is so recognizable – and endearing!
- devindotcom 12y agoBecause you didn't notice it, it must not have any effect? Isn't that like saying because you don't notice a site or city's layout, it has no effect? Or that because you didn't notice the addition of cumin to a dish, it had no effect?
- cms07 12y agoA logo is nothing like a city layout.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mehwoot 12y agoThat's a silly analogy. The effect of a logo is the impression on people. The layout of a city has concrete effects that people will notice regardless of whether they are aware of the layout itself or not. It's questionable whether an arrow in your logo that nobody notices will have any effect apart from designers talking about your logo.
- joshchan 12y agoI also never noticed the arrow in the Amazon logo went from A to Z, bu I wonder if it had a subconscious effect... (Same with the FedEx arrow before I noticed it)
- baddox 12y agoI didn't notice the arrow in Amazon's logo points from A to Z, but that's because it's pointing from A to O.
- anigbrowl 12y agoShouldn't downvote someone for pointing out a fact - it does point to O. I've messed about with it in Photoshop to make it point more at the Z but it ended up looking visually unbalancedso I guess there's some designer's license at work here.
- CmonDev 12y agoI guess the logo designer failed to solve this issue.
- dagw 12y agoAlpha->Omega then
- Zotabite 12y agoA to Z comes up quite a bit with Amazon. The claim is that "Amazon's selection goes from A to Z". Amazon has a development center named A2Z. There's also Lab126... Lab 1-26... Lab 'A'-'Z'.
- ohwp 12y agoThe e's in the Heineken logo are rotated a little to represent a 'smile'. Not a lot of people will see this but the logo gets a 'softer' feeling because of it so people will somehow notice it.
- Eric_WVGG 12y agoIt’s a lot like the difference between shitty code that is barely held together and happens to work, and really well written code that is beautiful from end to end. It’s sometimes invisible to the user, but these details are indicative of a software (or company or brand) that is intrinsically well-designed. (another example I’ve seen bandied about is shitty wood veneer vs well-crafted hardwood furniture)
- fanf2 12y agoThe problem with the Amazon logo is the swooshy arrow is a massive cliche, and whether or not they have clever reasons for the design, the result looks like yet another unimaginitive cookie cutter text+swoosh emblem. http://web.archive.org/web/20020815054059/50cups.com/swoosh/ http://web.archive.org/web/20020815054059/50cups.com/swoosh/
- devindotcom 12y agoStep 1: Hire Saul Bass http://annyas.com/saul-bass-logo-design-then-now/ http://annyas.com/saul-bass-logo-design-then-now/
- wahnfrieden 12y agoHis sketches and the back-and-forth with Kubrick on The Shining's poster are pretty fascinating: http://www.thefoxisblack.com/2012/12/11/saul-bass-poster-sketches-for-stanley-kubricks-the-shining/ http://www.thefoxisblack.com/2012/12/11/saul-bass-poster-ske...
- lelandbatey 12y agoWow, I'm totally impressed. I thought for the longest time that there must have been some kind of design renaissance back in the 70s and 80s that produced all the logos I found iconic. Turns out it was all one guy.
- spb 12y agoWell, it was also Paul Rand.
- asperous 12y agoWhat I think is interesting is in a lot of cases the older logos have the more 'flat' style which now is back in fashion and so looks futuristic/better.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jedmeyers 12y agoOr graffiti artist Chuy Ramirez
- overcyn 12y agoI love the Girl Scouts logo. Very unique and clever.
- MIT_Hacker 12y agoCan we talk about the line height and weight on the font of their blog? Hate to be a classic HN commenter, but it makes it almost impossible to read on mobile. Very little of my screen is actual black pixels, mostly just white space between lines and characters... </rant>
- anigbrowl 12y agoDesign commentary in comments seems to be taboo here lately.
- npizzolato 12y agoI would call it more "design complaining" and it honestly gets tiring because in every single thread there's someone complaining about how a header or slightly too thin font or or less-than-perfect margins or some other minor nitpick makes the site "impossible to read".
- vacri 12y agoThis isn't a comment about layout, it's a comment saying that the content can't be read because it's following that current trend of gray-on-white (that only Apple monitors seem to be able to present as intended). Sure, nitpicks about layout are annoying, but it's perfectly reasonable for someone to complain that they can't access the content.
- npizzolato 12y agoI read this article on an android phone in chrome, and while the text is a bit gray, it was still very easy to read. Unless your settings are way off, I can't imagine the colors are impossible to read outside of absurd hyperbole.
- vacri 12y agoSomething doesn't have to be "impossible to read" to make it inaccessible. Something written in Russian is inaccessible to me, as I don't read Russian. But it's not "impossible to read" - I can learn Russian; I can ask a friend; or most easily, I can use a translation tool to convert it to English. None of these are absurd hyperbole, but the content would be inaccessible without putting effort into it. When it comes to design, you generally want to avoid barriers to the user experience - and given that this is an article on a design topic concerning approachability and accessibility, my opinion is that it's fair game. Also, not everyone has 'normal' vision, which is another point to remember - text that is 'a little off' can be much worse for someone who is already near the boundaries. In any case, it looks like the author has gone back and darkened the text (or am I imagining things?)
- leoCodePoet 12y agoThe example of Pinterest and Path is for what? their logo is bad? I noticed that a lot of corp are using a single letter as their logo, such as Mashable, even hacker news. Recognizable is important, but hard. I upvote Pinterest logo over Path, and I like Twitter birds!
- spb 12y agoThis list should be in the reverse order.
- tripzilch 12y agoI especially expected the part about the silhouette being recognizable to be at the top.
- sithu 12y ago"All these logos are sized to fit in 16 x 16 pixels." - I was surprised how crisp these look for 16 pixels, then noticed the file was actually 32 x 32 and shows up as such on a retina display. It's a fair point that only the first four logos are recognizable when 16 pixels though.
- rezistik 12y agoHonestly, that seems very fair. Because of the way retina screens upsize images you actually get a clearer view of how it looks at 16 pixels in a standard screen by being served the 32px when using a retina one.
- sesqu 12y agoCan you explain what you mean with that? Surely an upscaled 16px image is more comparable to a crisp 16px image than a crisp 32px image is to a crisp 16px image, unless you want to argue that the 16px images are hand-crafted for crispness over form.
- kawsper 12y agoI really like Dockers logo, its cute and it works perfectly for a system that let you manage, and "ship containers". There is blog-post here about how they got their logo: http://blog.docker.io/2013/06/announcing-new-docker-style/ http://blog.docker.io/2013/06/announcing-new-docker-style/
- gene_rey 12y agoMaybe we should ask Will.I.Am regarding this matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFA7DUM008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFA7DUM008
- ArekDymalski 12y agoI've got a feeling that a big part of our sentiment towards the logo comes after the company succeeds. That's when stories, associations and emotions reinforce our perception of the brand as a whole. Just imagine Apple producing crappy, cheap devices. Would we still consider their logo awesome? I doubt it.
- gone35 12y agoAbsolutely. Logo branding is a near perfect locus for business cargo-culting: "clearly great companies that are iconic and recognizable have great logos, so we need a great logo to become iconic and recognizable too!". The problem --as with most intractable "design wisdom" nowadays-- is that there is very little empirical evidence to support either way ---cf the 1875 Bass Brewery logo[1], (arguably) precisely the kind of meaningless "business name slapped on a generic shape" being argued against in the article. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Brewery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Brewery
- radley 12y agoThe logos of Path and Pinterest are very similar. Pinterest was actually designed by Mike Deal and fontographer Juan Carlos Pagan. The letter P looks like a needle & thread (i.e. a pin). http://blog.pinterest.com/post/31465690453/new-logo-design-notes-from-michael-carlos http://blog.pinterest.com/post/31465690453/new-logo-design-n... Path... is a font. http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/32786/path-logo-font http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/32786/path-logo-font
- thathonkey 12y agoYeah but you don't pin things to bulletin boards using needle and thread so while clever, it doesn't really match their concept like you suggest.
- frogpelt 12y agoPinterest is about the ideas and projects that are being pinned more than just about the act of pinning. A needle and thread is a nice way to represent those ideas that are being shared.
- esquivalience 12y agoYou're right in the sense that comparing a logo to a font isn't like-to-like. However, his point for me is wider than that - if the logo triggers a mental link to something else, even if it's a different concept, that's potentially very bad. The author is referring in lay terms to the legal concept of trademark distinctiveness (ie, not-being-generic-ness) rather than the concept of conflict between two brands (a different legal principle, albeit one that is clearly important). I don't know whether or not this is deliberate, but either way it's done very well.
- anotherevan 12y agoDammit. I misread this as "The Makings of Great Lego" Yet another disappointment. Sigh.
- hkmurakami 12y agoI'm ashamed that I read WWF as the wresting version rather than the wildlife version :(
- nkozyra 12y agoIt hasn't been WWF for more than a decade for this reason. (I've never watched wrestling before, I swear)
- CmonDev 12y agoActually that is Windows Workflow Foundation.
- chiph 12y agoThe WWF (the wildlife people) have some amazing lawyers. Not only did they defeat Microsoft, but they also defeated Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Attitude_Era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Attitude_Era
- kgabis 12y agoPlease, let's pretend that this thing doesn't exist.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- lhgaghl 12y ago> Your company's logo is the fundamental foundation to your business branding sage. OP is a faggot.
- nayanga 12y agoit should be hand drawable Keeping it Simple Do not use multi-color (meaning no color transitions and shading, but can have more colors ) Should look good in B&W Pattern should be easily recognizable
- nayanga 12y agohttp://nayan-ambali.blogspot.in/ http://nayan-ambali.blogspot.in/
- NAFV_P 12y agoThe DHL logo [0], it's odd but why do leaning or italic bold letters give a sensation of movement? Oh, and a logo from a dnb label [1]. [0] http://www.dhl.co.uk/en.html http://www.dhl.co.uk/en.html [1] http://www.metalheadz.co.uk http://www.metalheadz.co.uk
- rhengles 12y ago>> Casual script fonts like Comic Sans are probably best left for fun and animated companies such as toy companies. Except Comic Sans _itself_, which isn't appropriate for anything.
- aurumpotest 12y agoActually, my mum uses it all the time. She's a primary school teacher, and it works great for children's worksheets, seeing as the 'a' is formed the way we learn to write it at school. Yes there's other fonts with 'a's like that, but not ones that are available on all computers by default.
- ohwp 12y agoThe articles doesn't give examples of why you need to test your logo in black and as small size. I think some logo designers only focus on digital so here some non digital examples: Black logo examples: Logo on a Fax Logo on a photo copy Logo on a black-only laser printer Small logo examples: Logo on a pen Logo on a USB drive
- lhgaghl 12y agoI can't see my comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7819659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7819659). I didn't choose this font colour. I think there is something wrong with the server
- GhotiFish 12y agoThat javascript one is fantastic. edit: Apparently I'm Blasé.