logo

How Lego and MIT Came Together To Give Us Lego Robots

Lego's '80s strategy almost gave into fearmongering surrounding electronic toys, but instead it laid the groundwork for the beloved Mindstorms line.

Spotify, Fix Your Crooked Logo—It’s Driving Me Nuts

The Spotify logo is tilted. It took me entirely too long to know this for sure. For at least three years, I’ve been tapping and clicking the app icon and watching the logo appear as the service loads. Looking at the lime-green circle with its black, curved lines, it just seemed a little off-kilter. But…

Trump Wants You to Choose a Space Force Logo… for the Merch He’ll Sell You

No one but defense contractors and their accountants knows why America needs a Space Force. But moments after announcing the new U.S. military branch, the Trump campaign gave us a hint at this arguably idiotic idea’s true purpose: Lining the campaign’s pockets. At this point, it’s a tired cliche to claim the president is just…

What’s The Red Shape in NASA’s Meatball Logo?

You’ve probably seen NASA’s so-called “meatball logo,” and wondered what it meant. Obviously, the blue sphere represents a planet. What about the red? I’d assumed the chevron stood for aeronautics, and once I heard it represented a certain constellation. But the truth is more interesting. Thanks to NASA’s latest free e-book titled “Emblems of Exploration:…

Google’s Logo Killed Serifs Because Serifs Had It Coming

Google debuted a serif-free logo today—the first real change to its logo since 1999. And although it’s much prettier than the 16-year-old wordmark, the company claimed it was more about functionality than looks: The Google logo has become more and more problematic throughout its existence, and it had everything to do with those serifs. First,…

The New Sonos Logo Looks Like Pulsing Sound as You Scroll It

Scroll the page. Go on, scroll it. And marvel at the way the new, perfectly static Sonos logo pulses—like sound is emanating from its centre, producing a pounding bass line. This new logo has been produced for by Bruce Mau Design, and it’s supposed to “advance the idea of the modern music experience.” In fact…

This is how professional designers create their logos

Yesterday we saw here that famous logos can have hidden meanings, almost like easter eggs designers use to enrich them. But how do those logos come to life? Designer Aaron Draplin explains in this video how his creative process works. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

The hidden meaning behind 40 famous logos

Companies spend millions of dollars coming up with unique and compelling logos that define their brands and make them stand out from their competitors. We see hundreds of them everyday, but do we really get what those logos mean? This graphic is a compilation of 40 famous logos and the hidden meaning behind them. SPLOID…

Why MIT Media Lab Scrapped Its Old Logo After Just Three Years

Back in 2011, Gizmodo reported on MIT Media Lab’s cool new logo: A self-generating algorithm that gave each and every team and employee within the organization their own unique logo. This month, the lab revealed a new identity, doing away with the old version after an extraordinarily short run. And they had a very good…

Watch the 1969 Pitch That Convinced AT&T To Adopt Its Iconic Logo

In the late 1960s, the telecommunications revolution was in full swing. Yet the logo of its biggest innovator, AT&T, had remained the same for 80 years. It was time for a complete brand overhaul, so AT&T tapped legendary graphic designer Saul Bass to do it. After working on a new logo for one year—one year!—this…

When a Garbage Pail Looks Like the Samhain Logo

It’s hard to believe these water droplets are not computer generated

Adobe asked artist Alex Trochut to recreate the company’s logo “using the technique of his choice.” This is the impressive result, which I love because of its use of color and the fact that he didn’t use digital software to create these perfect bubbles. Listen to Alex explaining how he made them: SPLOID is a…

Can a New Logo and Redesign Make Bing Any More Popular?

Out with curly and blue; in with angular and gold. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has just received a major redesign which it’s hoped will reinvigorate the service—but is it really enough? The new logo uses the same color as one of the Windows quadrants, a stylized “b”, and a sharp Segoe font for the rest…

Vintage NASA animations make us long for a fully funded space program

From NASA’s 1977 Aeronautics and Space Report comes this retro-tastic animation of the Agency’s logo in spiral. It’s one of a few old-school logo-animations from the Agency that have been making their way around the internet this week. WE WANT MORE.

Can You Name the Brands Behind These 20 Translated Logos?

The logo of a multinational brand needs to be recognizable in any language, which is why so much time and effort goes into developing a strong design. But it’s still fun to see what Subway’s logo looks like in Chinese, or what Pizza Hut looks like in Farsi. I collected 20 of these amazing “domesticated”…

These Parody Logos of Famous Brands Are More Honest Than the Real Logos

Most company logos usually play it pretty safe: stale stencils or vanilla graphics mixed with a bunch of nothingness to keep uniqueness to a minimum. That’s never fun. But if you get too adventurous, the Internet skewers you. That’s why we’re left with logos and brands that pretty much are all different degrees of the…

How the NSA’s Logo Should Really Look

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Hugh D’Andrade decided to give the NSA’s logo a makeover following recent events. How very, very accurate. [Hugh D’Andrade via Boing Boing] https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-and-fbi-have-been-spying-on-our-internet-habits-511750202

The Age of the Anti-Logo: Why Museums Are Shedding Their Idenities

Designing a museum logo used to be a simple. Maybe you chose the outline of the building facade. Or a staid serif logotype. Or hell, just the heraldic seal of whatever aristocrat was underwriting the whole operation. But in an era of faltering endowments and fickle audiences, many museums are turning to high-concept graphic design…

21st Century Fox’s First Logo Fixes What Wasn’t Broken

The logo is a volatile instrument. It can do more harm than good if it’s introduced the wrong way, or with too much fanfare, or with too much self-congratulation (remember the Gap debacle?). Which might explain why the unveiling of 21st Century Fox’s first identity, yesterday afternoon, could’ve easily slipped under the radar. http://gawker.com/5658145/brandings-greatest-misses-the-new-gap-logo The…

A History of Superman, told in 25 logos over 75 years

Perhaps inspired by Cathryn Lavery’s grand poster of Batman logos, Maurice Mitchell created his own superhero infographic, tracing the 75-year history of the Superman shield. He admits that the chart isn’t completely comprehensive, but focuses on the major logo designs. It looks like this one isn’t available as a poster, at least not yet. https://gizmodo.com/72-years-of-batman-logos-on-a-single-poster-5968803…