From Original to Unique: A Quick Look at Logo Transformation

A company’s logo is one of the key elements that powers recognition from an audience, linking services or products to a specific brand.  When we think about brands, our minds recall those elements shaping a visual identity, being color the first thing that comes into play during the recognition process.

As simple as a logo can be, it holds a lot of responsibility. A single image can help us differentiate between brands, value, purposes and even develop expectations of standards or quality. If designed effectively, it can trigger feelings and emotions associated to a specific product or service, helping us to make decisions faster even at sub-conscious levels.

Setting the tone for your brand and sticking to it along the decades is not easy, and this is why almost all of the brands go through a series of re-branding processes through the years, sometimes even lasting only months, until they reach the point of the right brand identity that aligns with their corporate goals.

Technological advances have been a decisive factor in the renewal process: the constant search for ways to innovate, matching new experiences with aesthetics, reviving old concepts and making them look entirely new. 

Along the years, big brands such as Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola, and Mercedes Benz to name a few, have gone through several experiments of colors and concepts of their visual brand identities, resulting in cleaner yet powerful designs that can be easily identified and placed in that spot of the mind where we all want to be remembered.

Let’s start with Apple’s, an original logo designed by Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne depicting Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree. The first major change to what Apple’s logo looks like today, was created by Rob Janoff in the late 1970s, in the form of the classic bitten apple that we all recognize, but much more colorful. By the end of the XX century, a monochromatic approach set the tone until becoming the stylish silver, white or black logo that we see on any Apple devices nowadays.

There are different reasons why brands undergo several logo makeovers across time – the older the brand the more makeovers you’ll find. For some, the main reason is as simple as feeling outdated. Others incorporate new lines of products or services or even shift their corporate values towards new trends, making it necessary to reflect this new direction with a new brand identity. 

Whatever the case, these four examples show us that change is always an indispensable aspect that we need to keep in mind when making decisions during a branding identity process. It is important to focus on something that will stick for years to come, but it is also important to keep the door open to new, fresh concepts that will inevitably come with markets evolution, advancements and technology developments.