The secrets behind famous logos

Have you ever won­dered why logos have a par­tic­u­lar design ele­ment, col­or or type style?

Every logo design should have a reason behind its color selection. And here are three great examples to prove it.

While doing some research, I stum­bled across a great resource to feed your curios­i­ty to the secrets behind famous logos. Design­Hill, cre­at­ed a won­der­ful inter­ac­tive web­site that gives us insight on 70 of the world’s biggest logo designs. I obvi­ous­ly loved the con­cen­tra­tion on the sig­nif­i­cance of col­or for these brands. Hence, the inspi­ra­tion for this post. And after read­ing this, your curios­i­ty may be quenched… until you feel the urge to return to our blog for more insight! But hey, you can still use these facts as great office con­ver­sa­tion, or bet­ter yet, inspi­ra­tion for your own devel­op­ing brand.

1. Subway uses green and yellow as their main colors to convey a specific message and meaning.

Green cre­ates con­sumer aware­ness towards healthy eat­ing — mak­ing Sub­way a leader in their indus­try. To sup­port this life-style and enhance the ben­e­fits of eat­ing healthy, yel­low was used to relate to hap­pi­ness, joy and optimism.

2. Another great example is MasterCard and their interlacing red and yellow-orange circles.

While their brand guide­lines list yel­low as their col­or, that par­tic­u­lar yel­low isn’t a pure, pri­ma­ry col­or, yel­low. It has a per­cent­age of magen­ta (based on CMYK val­ues), which gives it a yel­low-orange tone. By using this tone, they incor­po­rate the mean­ing behind both col­ors. In oth­er words, Mas­ter­Card embraces the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a pure yel­low — joy, intel­lect, opti­mism. And the char­ac­ter­is­tics of an orange hue — cre­ativ­i­ty, unique­ness, stimulation.

Let’s not for­get about the use of red in their left cir­cle. Red is used to trig­ger mean­ings of pas­sion, pow­er, excite­ment. Togeth­er, these col­ors sup­port their brand’s mes­sage by mak­ing con­sumers feel these emo­tions towards the things mon­ey can’t buy.

Isn’t col­or AMAZING? Learn more on how you can also har­ness the pow­er of col­or by read­ing our “5 Secrets to Using Col­or in Design” post.

3. We are all familiar with Twitter and their famous blue bird. But do you know why they chose that color?

“There is noth­ing like true blue.” That is what is stat­ed on their brand guide­lines. Twit­ter, like many of the social media giants, uses blue in the logo. Blue is the most pop­u­lar col­or amongst brands world-wide. It is asso­ci­at­ed with the sea and sky — think vast oppor­tu­ni­ties, or even blue ocean strate­gies. The inter­pre­ta­tion of the col­or blue has lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of vari­a­tions, if not end­less ones. In this instance, Twitter’s col­or selec­tion com­mu­ni­cates knowl­edge, con­tem­pla­tion and coolness.

Now, I’d love to hear from you in the com­ment sec­tion below. What is your favorite logo? Are you a fan of the col­ors, type, or design style they use?