Sun Symbols, Society, Ancient History, and Barack Obama...

DriftingByTheStorm wrote:

so a company that sells gas and has the name "SHELL" should turn their logo in to a SUN??

It's a stylized shell... not a sun :roll:

Real shell....



Logo shell....

Byrnzie wrote:

Where does Hamburglar fit in all of this? :?

easy........when viewed from above, his sombreo resembles the sun and the obivious 666 is on his forehead.

this topic makes me smile.

While I was reading this post, my (almost) 3 yr old was sitting across the room, unable to see my computer screen and drawing a huge SUN on her Doodle Pro. I don't know what that means, but it certainly did tickle me.

Brain of J.Lo wrote:

While I was reading this post, my (almost) 3 yr old was sitting across the room, unable to see my computer screen and drawing a huge SUN on her Doodle Pro. I don't know what that means, but it certainly did tickle me.

They get you early, is what .

Generally, linking ancient history, mythology and all that with modern times, places and people are in the extreme far-fetched. Just because we now can read books about it from the shelf next to billionaire biographies, doesn't mean they are in any way connected, although our minds work in such ways that we always look for connecting stuff we see. A circle, the sun and whatever, has been the basis of religions, and humans have since time immemorial liked such symbols. Circles, triangles, stars, half moons abound throughout human history. That doesnt imply conspiracy and control, it implies people thinking similarly and perhaps in archetypes a la Jung.

Repeating basic geometric shapes in logos is far easier and less messily explained by graphic designers nowadays liking clean and basic logos. It's in the times to be minimalistic, and logos based on basic geometric shapes like circles and triangles are in vogue. Simple, inobtrusive logos that can be slapped on anything are better than ornamental, complicated ones. And the more the company can be associated with a basic geometric shape, so much the better. That means we may think of the company when we encounter that shape elsewhere. Circles can signify all sorts of things: Coins (which may make it a fave in banking etc), the Sun, continuity, eternity, bottle caps and so on.

Basically, what dunkman said.

Peace
Dan

time warner logo creator... here;s an interview with him.

DESIGNER AT CHERMAYEFF & GEISMAR

What determines the choice of colors when you design a corporate logo?
Well, most corporations tend to prefer blue to any other color. It doesn’t have any negative connotation. It evokes the sky, etc. Blue is safe.
Blue doesn’t have to be the color of the whole logo, of course. We designed MOBIL that has a red “O” in it, but it’s an accent within a blue logo. The same holds true for many others that are basically a blue scale with maybe a red accent.
Red is usually perceived, at least on the corporate level, perhaps as too aggressive. I don’t think that we have at this point to overcome the political stigma that red is communism. That used to be in the olden days, I don’t think that’s the case anymore.


When you are commissioned to design a logo, how much freedom do you have to decide what the colors are going to be?
We always make recommendations, and try to be reasonable about it but a lot of our work has to do with mergers or companies upgrading what they had in the past. Often a corporation associates with a color and feels strongly about it, you can try to maybe swing away from this with a hue which may be more memorable or has more distinction to it, but often it is very much influenced by the past.
Color is never brought up as the original question. It always comes along with the symbol or the logotype.
When you get into the range of symbols even more so, it has to do with what the company is about. In NBC’s case, the revelation was that ABC was perceived as black and white, CBS did not have much color to it and NBC had this great advantage in having a symbol [the peacock] that stood for color. That peacock was a symbol for color television, it was not the symbol for NBC. They just adopted it as a pet. It used to say: “Brought to you in living color” and then the peacock came on the screen to announce that the program was changing from black and white to color. And then NBC adopted it because it has a great deal to do which what they’re about, which is color television.
In another case, if you do, let’s say, a symbol for Central Park, you have a good chance of making that green, simply because it implies a relief from all the city grey. It obviously has to do with what it’s about.

What are your limitations when reworking or updating a corporate logo?
Well if it is a reworking of something or a merging of an old company with another old company of course you try to see what their past has been, because you try to have some continuation. It’s often very helpful to tie in, especially if there is equity in the perception or equity in the visual heritage companies bring with them. You try to, at least, tie something over.
TIME WARNER is perhaps an extreme example, both companies’ identities were given up in order to attain a new one. It was the only way to do so because both had a very strong product identification. For TIME, nobody knows really what TIME INC. looks like, but they know the product, they know what TIME magazine looks like, and LIFE, PEOPLE magazine, FORTUNE, TIME LIFE books and what have you. For WARNER the “W” in a sort of TV shape was not quite as well known as for instance the WARNER BROS. shield, which was a division of WARNER COMMUNICATION, so the corporate heritage was not that strong. Nevertheless, even though it’s a completely new symbol, that signifies an eye and an ear, in the end it goes back to blue because that is what they are used to, both of them.