Logos and meaning

There's a fierce amount of BS that gets spouted around the launch of a logo, especially where its a rebranding exercise. Millions have to be justified by some tiny graphic object and many pages are spent going into its deep psychology; how "it" represents some deep yearning we have for the company's products and services etc etc etc ad bleeding nauseam.

So, I thought I'd turn it inside out. Here's the logo.

What does it represent and whose logo is it?

If you know for a fact, ie you have stopped by the forum I found it on or the original, please hold off identifying it, I want to know whether it conveys anything by its essence.

My take is that logos mean whatever we vest in them over time, none of them have any inherent meaning so they can't express anything at all until they have been in use for a while.

This has meaning


But this

Doesn't.

Although once it did. It meant failed product and the name still does, but the logo, not so much

Or, never mind changing the shade of the lipstick, what have you done with the pig

Comments

[Don Rae]

I'm afraid the unnamed logo reminds me of a childish scribble made with a felt pen that's running out of ink.

Print-wise, this will be awful to reproduce, for one, blue is the slowest drying ink (not sure why). Other hard-copy reproduction such as signage will be equally fun.

Good luck to all associated with this logo ... no doubt it's a hugely expensive logo for a global firm I should know about but it rings no bells.

On the upside, it'll be hard to copy!

Re meaning? Chaos? Some kind of atomic/whirling electron association? What the sun looks like after Armageddon? Beats me...

I agree with you that it's the pig that counts, not the lipstick but I wonder if ANZ think of themselves as a pig? (Not that I am describing them as such.) :-)

http://thefinancialbrand.com/2009/04/21/anz-new-logo/ ...

ANZ's new logo has cost $15m so, being that banks are not noted for frivolous spending, they must see a future ROI.

I think good logos become both a symbol to and a badge for consumers of how those consumers experience and value a business in its totality.

But the logo is still only a visual manifestation of the brand.

For an Apple or Nike or a Louis Vuitton or any other famous global brand, I'd expect the value of that brand has a real number beside it on the balance sheet, which would be based on an aggregated valuation of all the customer's perceptions of and experience with those brands. The product, the people, where the product is bought, how others perceive the product and the business... in other words every way that the business touches the customers.

By itself, a logo has no value until value has been created by the business. For a startup that hasn't traded yet, the value has to be ipso facto negative.

So you are entirely right, a logo has no meaning or value until we have experienced it over time, and the business has delivered value to its customers.

[Saltation]

>logo

i
have
no
fucking
idea

it looks like someone desperately drowning in post-ironicism trying to follow the current re-coolness of the circular (japanese Mon) logo