Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Where do logos come from?

  • They're as old as civilization itself.
  • It is said that branding ( identifying an object's ownership) came from marking cattle and temples in ancient Egypt and in development by Greek and Roman craftsmen of 'marker's mark', which allowed goods to be traded with confidence anywhere across an entire empire, regardless of their place of origin. This is continued in the role of trademarks today.
  • However, the Bible tells of an instance of branding that pre-dates just about everything. The old testament reports that God 'put a mark on Cain'. ( not as punishment but as protection ) The mark was God's 'keep off' sign, addressed ti potential Edenite vigilante groups.
  • Today, the world's omnipotent brands belong not to deities but to fast-food chains, drinks, banks, telecom giants an airlines.
  • 19th century packaging of early mass-prodced goods were branded with company insignia to aid their distribution from factories and the differentiate them from locally produced competitor products.
  • Kellogg's and Cambell's emplyed founder's signature to gain trust
  • other longlasting logos originating from this time include those of Shell, Mercedez-Benz, Ford and Michilin.
  • But it was the german business that pioneered what is now called corporate identity. in 1906, the electrical goods group AEG hired an ' artistic advisor' , Peter Behrens. The logo he designed is still in used unchanged iin almost a cntury.
  • but the real age of logo arrived after WWII, when booming demand for goods in the USA, stoked by the new medium of television advertising, unleashed a new flood of new products and businesses. The growth in department stores and supermarkets meant that packaging had to work ten times as hard to catch the buyer's eye.
  • Logos and graphics that were visually simple and immediate won attention; applied consistently and repetitively acorss packaging and advertising, they wont loyalty.

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