
The Age of the Wordless Logo (2016) - macbookaries
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-age-of-the-wordless-logo/499166/?single_page=true
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jaysonelliot
Conversely, my own company has chosen a logo with only the name, and no
logomark.

Our name is only three letters, so it makes for a very easy lockup, and I
believe it's strong without any symbols. I wouldn't call this the best
approach in every case, but it's what we prefer:
[http://tsrgames.com/](http://tsrgames.com/)

A symbol alone as a logo is good for an iconic brand, but not necessarily for
a brand trying to establish themselves. A logo + symbol can work when that
logo adds something to the meaning, like Amazon's smile mark or the Salesforce
cloud. And sometimes the logo alone is stronger, like Google or IBM.

Wordless logos are as old as advertising. Car companies have relied on their
symbols to speak for them for decades, and it's easy to think of classic
symbols like the Playboy bunny, Penguin books, Swiss army knives, etc. that
have been wordless most all of their lives. Apple's logo has been used without
words right back to the 1970s.

There will always be different approaches that work for different brands.
Choosing the right approach for any company is always on a case-by-case basis.

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113
Isn't that confusingly similar to Gygax's TSR?

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jaysonelliot
We acquired the trademark about five years ago, I founded the new company
together with Luke & Ernie Gygax. Several original TSR people are involved.
We're doing tabletop only right now, and we're working on a new mobile
platform.

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colanderman
Thankfully we can still describe such logos using the USPTO's design search
code ontology:
[http://tess2.uspto.gov/tmdb/dscm/index.htm](http://tess2.uspto.gov/tmdb/dscm/index.htm)

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JunaidBhai
I think that wordless logo can only work for brands who spend heavily on
marketing and advertising. We ran a design shop for past 10 years and lately
pivoted into a productized service [http://draftss.com](http://draftss.com)

All these years we've received hundreds of requirements with similar
specifications such as "We want a logo that we can use just as a mark, Eg:
nike, adidas, mcdonalds, etc."

What client did not understand is that it's not just design or branding that
makes these big brands recognizable to every person but their huge expenditure
on 360-degree marketing campaigns. Not just any marketing campaign but high
targetted quality campaigns where they are spending a huge sum of money
everyday for decades.

Although, this article reminds me of a time when Web 2.0 had been at rage and
there were articles which said it's the Age of Web 2.0

All the logo design brief we received thereafter were "We want a Web 2.0
logo".

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NeedMoreTea
I just posted this on the firefox logo discussion, but it applies equally well
here.

I have a theory that we're almost _always_ in a design bubble.

Look back in the history of most major brands, icons and trademarks and the
ones that most people would consider classic all seem to come from two or
three distinct eras.

The rest can be viewed as "what the hell were they thinking?". Current thought
doesn't seem to be shaping up for any classics.

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saagarjha
> This year’s Top 20 includes Paypal and MasterCard, as well as Coca-Cola.

Of course, this ignores the fact that they're low on the list, with many of
the top spots going to companies with their name in the logo.

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macbookaries
I think it’s more a reason of how the brands are presented on that particular
external list (ie mostly by name rather than logo). If you look at the top 5
at least Apple and PayPal have shifted to pretty much wordless logos

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Jaruzel
I am surprised that no-one has mentioned Amazon yet.

If you look at the boxes now[1], they only have the Amazon curved-arrow logo
on them. Even the black Prime branded packing tape no longer says Amazon on
it. Also the ending of the TV adverts are the same, with just the curved arrow
logo.

\--

[1] In the UK, at least.

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arthurfm
> If you look at the boxes now[1], they only have the Amazon curved-arrow logo
> on them.

Another thing I noticed is that some third-party sellers are using similar
yellow curved arrows in their product images [1][2]. I guess this results in
more sales due to the association with Amazon?

[1]
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07583NM7L](http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07583NM7L)

[2]
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071VX675L](http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071VX675L)

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Jaruzel
Or to create the impression that it's an Amazon only bundle/offer ?

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aeontech
I noticed a billboard the other day. All it had was an edge-to-edge
photograph, a raised squircle outline (iOS app icon shape of square with
rounded corners), and a one word name.

It was a very simple ad, but it made me double-take, because I suddenly
realized that the squircle has become such an ingrained visual term of our
cultural reference frame that it's sufficient to show just that outline to
communicate that this is advertising for a mobile app.

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derefr
It makes a lot of sense, too. It's like AOL keywords, or hashtags, or even
phone numbers: all attempts to brand the idea of "dial X to get Y." In this
case, it's "press the button that looks like X to get Y."

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dpeck
99designs has a good page on different kids of logos/word arms that gives a
good baseline of terminology [https://99designs.com/blog/tips/types-of-
logos/](https://99designs.com/blog/tips/types-of-logos/)

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rahimnathwani
This only works if your brand is well know already, so it's unlikely for this
to be a major trend.

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Broken_Hippo
That is definitely not true. These are all examples of getting folks to
associate an existing company with a logo. If you are starting a company, you
don't really have to do the same work. All you need is to advertise the logo
and attach it to your products. The "bulk" of an advertisement can mention the
name in text or audio. It works nearly the same as the name does, but with
less mental effort on the consumer's end. You simply need to be consistent
with the logo. Like the other poster said, game studios do this, even new
ones. Superman and Batman pulled this off very successfully long ago as well.

Of course, it does take some popularity for it to be in the public eye like
the McDonald's logo does.

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jlebrech
or maybe "no logo" is the new logo.

just have a unique font made for your brand and nothing else.

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dest
Like Stripe ?

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jlebrech
that's a good example

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yuchi
Moderators, please add a `(2016)` suffix to the title.

