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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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 is…
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.
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?
From NASA's 1977 Aeronautics and Space Report comes this retro-tastic animation of the Agency's logo in spiral.
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.
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…
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]
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…
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…
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…
Google's little green android is now a well-known tech icon. But these pictures—the original concept drawings for the Android mascot—show what could have been if Google hadn't used a talented designer to realize its ideas.
Ritter Sport makes fine German chocolate in a variety of flavors. Microsoft makes electronics and software of all sorts. Ritter is found in grocery stores, bodegas, and booze emporiums the world over. Microsoft is found in pockets and PCs and places of business all across the land. Both good companies. Both successful…
Logos are usually boring and quite bad, but they're things we're forced to look at every single day, so let's care about them. In particular, let's care about Microsoft's—which just got its first makeover since 1987.
