Logo Evolution Stories

Logo Evolution Stories: The world's most recognizable marks rarely arrived fully formed; many started as fussy illustrations, cheap stock art or student side gigs, then were simplified over decades, and a few redesigns flopped so hard that companies reversed them within days.

Apple Logo: Apple's first logo in 1976, drawn by cofounder Ronald Wayne, was a detailed etching of Isaac Newton under a tree; Rob Janoff replaced it in 1977 with the rainbow bitten apple.

Nike Swoosh: Portland State student Carolyn Davidson was paid $35 for the Swoosh in 1971; Phil Knight said he did not love it but hoped it would grow on him, and later gave her company stock.

Twitter Bird: The original bird was bought as stock art for about $15, was nicknamed Larry after basketball legend Larry Bird, and was retired when the platform became X in 2023.

Gap Logo: In 2010 Gap swapped its classic blue box for Helvetica with a small gradient square; after a storm of online anger, it reversed the change in about a week.

Tropicana: A 2009 packaging redesign that dropped the straw in the orange caused sales to fall about 20 percent in two months, and the brand quickly brought the old carton back.

Coca-Cola Script: The flowing wordmark was penned in the 1880s by Frank Mason Robinson, the company's bookkeeper, in Spencerian script, the standard business handwriting of the day.

Shell Logo: The oil company began with a mussel shell in 1900, switched to a scallop in 1904, and was simplified into its modern red and yellow form by Raymond Loewy in 1971.

Lucky Strike: Raymond Loewy redesigned the pack from green to white around 1940, and the brand spun the change into the wartime slogan 'Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War.'

Starbucks Siren: The 1971 logo was a bare chested, two tailed siren adapted from an old Norse woodcut; her hair was lengthened to cover her in 1987, and the Starbucks name was dropped from the mark in 2011.

FedEx Logo: Lindon Leader's 1994 design hides a white arrow between the E and the x, a detail most people never notice until it is pointed out, and it has won dozens of design awards.

Paul Rand: The designer of the IBM stripes charged Steve Jobs $100,000 for the NeXT logo and presented exactly one option, explaining that Jobs could pay him either way.

London 2012 Logo: The jagged Olympic mark cost about 400,000 pounds and drew a petition of tens of thousands demanding its removal; an animated version was pulled after reports it could trigger seizures.

Mercedes-Benz Star: The three pointed star traces back to a postcard on which Gottlieb Daimler marked his home with a star, and its points came to stand for land, sea and air.

BMW Roundel: The popular story that the logo shows a spinning propeller came from a 1929 ad; BMW itself says the blue and white quarters come from the Bavarian flag, placed in reverse order.

Pepsi Globe: A leaked 2008 strategy document for the redesign linked the new logo to the golden ratio, the Earth's magnetic field and the theory of relativity, and was widely mocked by designers.

Airbnb Belo: When Airbnb unveiled its looping symbol in 2014, the internet immediately saw anatomy in it and flooded social media with parody versions within days.

Google Logo: Sergey Brin made the first logo himself in free software, complete with a Yahoo style exclamation mark; the 2015 sans serif version shrank the file from about 14,000 bytes to 305.

Instagram Logo: In 2016 the app traded its brown retro camera for a flat glyph on a sunset gradient, and the backlash was so loud it became a case study in redesign reactions.

Bibendum: The Michelin Man first appeared in an 1898 poster by the artist O'Galop, raising a goblet filled with nails and broken glass under the Latin slogan 'Nunc est bibendum.'

Firefox Logo: The creature wrapped around the globe is usually called a fox, but 'firefox' is a nickname for the red panda, which Mozilla's own early materials said was the animal the name referred to.

Chevrolet Bowtie: William C. Durant claimed he copied the shape from wallpaper in a Paris hotel, while his widow later said he spotted it in a newspaper ad.

Volkswagen Logo: The VW roundel dates to the late 1930s and is usually credited to Porsche engineer Franz Reimspiess; the brand flattened it into a thin line version in 2019.

NASA Worm: The sleek red 1975 wordmark by Danne and Blackburn was retired in 1992 in favor of the older 'meatball' insignia, then brought back in 2020 for SpaceX crewed launches.

Olympic Rings: Pierre de Coubertin drew the rings in 1913, and he said the five colors plus the white background could reproduce the flag of every nation competing at the time.