Famous logos – From free to multi-million designs

Logos are extremely powerful things and will morph as the company changes. For instance, did you know that before Nokia became a tech giant it was first a wood pulp mill by Nokianvirta river and its original logo was a fish? Their road to “connecting people” was really long.

Some logos are so powerful that they don’t need to spell out their names, but how can these simple, trivial little artworks inspire global familiarity with so many of them having become iconic? Because they’re not just simple doodles.

Logos are the result of many years refinement, skill and a dash of science.

Recognition of brands may even start messing with your head at a much earlier stage than originally thought. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that children 2-3 years old could already recall a logo and the product it represents in 67% of cases.

Apple’s road to global recognition hasn’t been all plain sailing, as many of you will already know. Their first logo depicted Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, an apple dangling precipitously above his head. It doesn’t much resemble the now renowned puritan and fuss-free style that Steve Jobs was so evangelical about at all.

Thanks to a few restyles of logo and company image, Interbrand’s 14th Best Global Brand reported that there was a new number one brand in the world last year: Apple. Coke was defeated for the first time after thirteen consecutive years of dominating the prestigious list.

It has been widely believed that colours can evoke a specific emotional response from us. Red means active, yellow is energetic, blue is reliable, green is nature, etc. In fact, it doesn’t stop at the obvious; researchers at the University of Rochester in New York believe red can actually “keep us from performing our best on tests.”

Some companies invest many millions in to the design of their logo. The new Pepsi logo was so expensive to create that the agency thought it should justify the million-dollar cost with a lecture on Da Vinci diagrams, yin-yangs, and Mobius strips. On the other end, some popular logos like Twitter and Google cost almost next to nothing!

Some interesting tech logo factoids:

• Google’s first logo was made in a free graphics program GIMP
• The original twitter logo was bought on iStockPhoto for $15
• Canon’s original logo was much more Japanese and looked completely different
• IBM’s first logo had a T in it, because in 1888 they produced tabulating machines

Check out the infographic below for more interesting logo facts.