World Biggest Brands Logo Design History

Following collection of some of the well-known logos of big brands and companies with a creative rationale behind their design, meaning of those logos, their design, which hopefully will inspire other graphic designers and educate clients.

Google Logo

Google is known as a strong leader of the web-search industry. Its goal is to provide relevant information and groundbreaking products to its customers. It all started in 1996 as a research project by two Stanford University's students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The Google logo has had many different versions since its renaming from BackRub. The current official logo design of Google Inc. represents the name "Google" in logotype based on the Catull typeface and was created by Ruth Kedar. Its almost amateurish simplicity may correspond to the simplicity of the search engine. Every once in a while, the company uses various features of the logo which compliment and refer to birthdays of illustrious personalities like Leonardo Di Vinci, Albert Einstein, Edward Munch; holidays like 4th of July, Christmas, Mother's Day and specific events such as The Olympics, World Cup etc. These special modification have become known as Google Doodles and were first created by the fondaters of the company in 1999. The doodles are currently designed by Dennis Hwang who has created over 150 doodles since the year 2000.

Lamborghini Logo

The bull logo actually stands for the founder's, Ferruccio Lamborghini, zodiacal sign (Taurus), and is obviously accompanied by the company's name, Lamborghini. Contrary to other "patriot" Italian carmakers, Lamborghini does not use the Italy's colors on its logo.

Amazon Logo

This logo doesn’t seem to hide much at first sight, but it gives you a little insight in the philosophy behind the brand. First of all, the yellow swoosh looks like a smile: Amazon.com want to have the best customer satisfaction. The swoosh also connects the letters a and z, meaning that this store has everything from A to Z.

Fedex Logo

This is probably one of the best known logos with a hidden meaning. If you look closely, you’ll see an arrow that’s formed by the letters E and x. This arrow symbolizes speed and precision, two major selling points of this company.

Continental Logo

Continental is a manufacturer of tyres. You could actually see this in their logo, because the first two letters create a 3-dimensional tyre.

Toblerone Logo

Toblerone is a chocolate-company from Bern, Switzerland. Bern is sometimes called ‘The City Of Bears’. They have incorporated this idea in the Toblerone logo, because if you look closely, you’ll see the silhouette of a bear.

Baskin Robins Logo

The old logo of Baskin Robbins had the number 31 with an arc above it. The new logo took this idea to the next level. The pink parts of the BR still form the number 31, a reference to the 31 flavours.

Sony Vaio Logo

Sony Vaio is a well known brand of laptops. But did you know that the name Vaio logo also had a hidden meaning? Well, the first two letters represent the basic analogue signal. The last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.

Carrefour Logo

Carrefour is one of the biggest European retailers, and it’s also French for “crossroads”. The logo symbolizes this word via two opposite arrows. They also added the first letter of the name, because if you look closely you’ll see the letter C in the negative space between the two arrows.

Unilever Logo

Unilever is one of the biggest producers of food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. They produce a huge amount of different products and they wanted to reflect this in their logo. Each part of the logo has a meaning. For example: the heart represents love, care and health - feeling good, a bird is a symbol of freedom. Relief from daily chores – getting more out of life.

Formula 1 Logo

At first, this logo might not make much sense. But if you look closely, you’ll see the number 1 in the negative space between the F and the red stripes. I also love how this logo communicates a feeling of speed.

Sun Microsystems Logo

The Sun logo is one of the most famous ambigrams in the world. You can read the brand name in every direction; both horizontally and vertically. This logo was designed by professor Vaughan Pratt of the Stanford University.

NBC Logo

The NBC (National Broadcasting Company) is one of the biggest American television networks. I think most of you have already seen the peacock in this logo. The peacock has 6 different tail feathers, referring to the six divisions at the time that this logo was created. The peacock’s head is flipped to the right to suggest it was looking forward, not back.

Puma Logo

The Puma logo has an image of a leaping Puma, an animal otherwise called a cougar, a panther or a mountain lion. Active both day and night, it is a powerful beast and an expert hunter that can jump to a maximum of 20 feet high in a single bounce. By incorporating the creature in the Puma logo, the company has summarized the complete meaning of  its products into a powerful identity. The Puma logo itself characterizes the brand’s reliability and its products’.

Toyota Logo

The Toyota logo contains three ellipses, which represent the heart of the customer, the heart of  the product and the heart of technological progress and limitless opportunities of the future. In Japanese, “Toyo” signifies abundance, and “ta” means rice. In some Asian cultures, the rice represents wealth.

Volkswagen Logo

The simple logo icon contains the letters V and W: “volks” means “people” and “wagen” means “car”.

Ferrari Logo

Almost every car enthusiast out there knows the "Prancing Horse", especially thanks to the great achievements the Italian carmaker recorded in the past. But the story of its logo is once again related to multiple theories. First of all, it is believed that the black prancing horse on yellow background was first used by Count Francesco Baracca, the Italian airforce that made a name for itself in World War I. Another theory claims the symbol was actually seen on a German pilot's plane that crashed during the war - the horse is actually the symbol of Stuttgart, which might raise some eyebrows because Porsche uses the same element as source of inspiration for its very own badge.

Mobil Logo

A simple typeface was used to attain exuberance and vitality. Red, being the intense color, evokes the strength and blue builds up a feeling of faithfulness and security for the company.

Mercedes-Benz Logo

The star in three corners represents the Mercedes-Benz dominance on land, sea and air.

McDonalds Logo

The idea of ‘arches’ was first introduced by Dick and Mac McDonald as arch shaped signs on the sides of their then ‘walk-up hamburger stand’. From an angle, those arches looked like the letter “M” and thus, were incorporated in the McDonalds logo as a merger of  the two golden arches together.

IBM Logo

If observed closely, the IBM logo, also known as “Big Blue”, generates a message of “Equality”. The Big Blue IBM logo, with its lower right parallel lines, highlights in the shape of an “equals” sign. Furthermore, the term “BIG” in the Big Blue IBM logo refers to the company’s size in the market share, whereas, the “BLUE” is the official color of the eight-bar IBM logo.

BMW Logo

The BMW medallion represents a propeller of  a plane in motion, and the blue represents the sky. This is because BMW has built engines for the German military planes in World War II.

Audi Logo

The "brand with the four rings" as Audi is often called is currently one of the world's top automakers and surely a leading German brand. Its logo, seen on millions of cars sold worldwide, is believed to have multiple meanings. On the other hand, some people believe that Audi's logo is a bit older and has a strong connection with the Olympic games. Either of the two meanings are actually true, the Audi logo underwent a minor makeover in 2009 when the badge got a new font plus a restyled 3D design of the four rings.

Audi Logo

The four rings, which make up the Audi logo, represent the four companies that were part of the Auto-Union Consortium in 1932. They were DKW, Horch, Wanderer and Audi.

Apple Logo

The apple is a reference from the Bible story of  Adam and Eve, where the apple represents the fruit of Tree of Knowledge, with a pun on ” byte/bite”. Rob Janoff, said in an interview that though he was mindful of the “byte/bite” pun (Apple’s slogan back then: “Byte into an Apple”), he designed the logo as such to “prevent the apple from looking like a cherry tomato.”

Adidas Logo

The shape of 3 stripes on the Adidas Logo represents a mountain, pointing out towards the challenges that are seen ahead and goals that can be achieved.