“Although his son, the President of the company, had initiated the corporate identity program, the Chairman and retired founder, Kazuo Tashima, remained skeptical of such fancy new ways.

“During the initial consultation process, he listened to my proposals in stony silence. At one point when I was speaking, Mr. Tashima plucked a miniaturized Minolta camera from its display stand, and said ‘Gentlemen, we have a very small product. There is hardly enough room on it for a name, let alone a symbol!’

“I paused a moment. ‘Mr. Tashima,’ I said, ‘your company has a perfectly symmetrical name — three letters on each side of a circle — and the circle is the perfect place for a symbol.’ I then reached over and took Herb Yager’s pipe out of his hand; it was a Dunhill pipe. I pointed to the traditional white Dunhill dot and said, ‘This is what you need — a magic dot.’ That did it. From then on the old lion was intrigued.”

Excerpted from page 348 of the superb book Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, published by Laurence King.

The trademark dot on Dunhill pipes, photo credit PipesMagazine

The Minolta corporate identity applied

Minolta merged with Konica in 2003 to form Konica Minolta.

Saul shared a little advice for design students in this video (embedded below).

From the LDL archives: Saul Bass logos: then and now.

Minolta logo (top) credit: I is someone else

Published on Logo Design Love

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• Saul Bass logos: then and now
• Kodak logo evolution
• De-cluttered logos
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As good a time as any to take a quick look at the Kodak logo evolution.

Image (above) and text (below) via Kodak website

Early 1900′s
Kodak is the first company to integrate its name and look into a symbol.

1930′s
Focus moved to the Kodak name and the red and yellow “trade dress” color.

1960′s
The corner curl was introduced.

1970′s
The mark retained the red and yellow colors and the Kodak name, but a box and graphic “K” element were added.

1980′s
A more contemporary type font streamlined the Kodak name within the existing logo.

Today
The box is gone, simplifying the logo. The rounded type font and distinctive “a” give the name a more contemporary look.

Kodak logo designed by Brand Integration Group, 2006

“The type-only successor to the brand’s 1971 vintage yellow-and-red K/arrow symbol is intended to offer a ‘more international and universal impact’, and to distance the company from its film and processing past.”

Quoted from Michael Evamy’s Logo.

Kodak was born in April 1880, when George Eastman leased the third floor of a building on State Street in Rochester. He began to manufacture dry plates for sale, and one of his first purchases was a second-hand engine priced at $125.

“I really needed only a one horse-power. This was a two horse-power, but I thought perhaps business would grow up to it. It was worth a chance, so I took it.”
— GEORGE EASTMAN

15 years ago Kodak’s market value was $31 billion (via Reuters).

The word “Kodak” was first registered as a trademark in 1888.

“I devised the name myself. The letter ‘K’ had been a favorite with me — it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with ‘K.’ The word ‘Kodak’ is the result.”
— GEORGE EASTMAN

More Kodak history here.

Kodak signage via Techweek

Related:
Kodak: a fond farewell, on The Guardian
Don Draper pitching “The Carousel” to Kodak, on YouTube

Kodak signage via Below Stairs

—

A few previous logo evolution features:
BMW
NASA
Paramount
Penguin
Waterstones

Published on Logo Design Love

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• Ferrari logo history
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• “This is what you need — a magic dot.”
• Penguin logo evolution

“In 1964 the Design Research Unit—Britain’s first multi-disciplinary design agency founded in 1943 by Misha Black, Milner Gray and Herbert Read—was commissioned to breathe new life into the nation’s neglected railway industry, the corporate image of which had remained largely unchanged after its nationalisation in 1948, a reflection of a largely disjointed and out-of-date transport system.

“The company name was shortened to British Rail and Gerry Barney of the Design Rearch Unit conceived the famous ‘double-arrow’, a remarkably robust and memorable icon that has far outlasted British Rail itself and continues to be used on traffic signs throughout the United Kingdom as the symbol for the national rail network and more specifically railway stations on that network.”

Quoted from Nick Job‘s fascinating website devoted to the double-arrow. Just look at the amount of detail in the manual section. Brilliant. Right down to the uniforms to be worn by the British Rail Catering Refreshment Room Staff.

Related:
D&AD 50: 1966, British Rail, on CR Blog
Another British classic, British Steel, on LDL

Via Iancu Barbărasă.

Published on Logo Design Love

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• “This is what you need — a magic dot.”
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“It started with the simple logo and name, suggested, allegedly, by a typist who was earwigging the board meeting. Allen had already hit upon the idea of an animal logo, inspired by the template offered by the contemporary publishing house The Albatross Library. “It was the obvious answer, a stroke of genius,” said Penguin’s original designer, Edward Young. “I went straight off to the zoo to spend the rest of the day drawing penguins in every pose.” The clear logo was matched with the archetypal modern, but not too scarily modern, typeface, Gill Sans, and the now classic three-band cover, with colours related to the subject: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, etc.”

Quoted from The Guardian.

Photo via The Fales Library

“Edward Young, who designed Penguin’s famous ‘dignified but flippant’ logo and the colour scheme for its book covers was a submariner during the war. His boat was involved in a collision which saw it sank to the bottom of the North Sea, but Young escaped by swimming to the surface.”

Quoted from jkr’s new book Champions of Design.

Penguin’s original logo designer, Edward Young, pictured above right

Edward Young’s obituary in The Guardian.

The version of the logo you’ll be more familiar with is typographer Jan Tschichold‘s 1946 modification, and subsequent 2003 fine-tuning by Pentagram‘s Angus Hyland.

Image via The Terrier and Lobster

Photo from Angus Hyland and Steven Bateman’s Symbol

Image via Penguin Logo Guidelines

A classic logo. A classic brand.

Published on Logo Design Love

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JLW: How did the British Steel commission come about?

DG: Through a neighbour, Will Camp [British Steel’s director of information services]. They had commissioned ideas already but they didn’t like them, so he came in one day and said will you give it a go.

JLW: Was that done quickly?

DG: Very quickly, yes.

JLW: I’ve read that it stemmed from a visualisation of the steel process — is that true?

DG: It came first from my own wish to suggest that steel was strong and flexible. Only later did I discover that steel was bent in order to test its strength — so I used this as a rationale, but I didn’t know that at the time!

—

Read the full interview on eye magazine.

Images courtesy of eye blog.

Published on Logo Design Love

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“Lots of brands have the authority to de-clutter their logos, not just Apple and Nike. Maybe it’s time they were braver?”

Image via Stuart Watson

The ones below are accompanied by the respective brand names on their websites. Perhaps they’ll move to ditch the name online (as Apple and Nike have).

I suppose it’s an easier decision if, after removing the type, you’re still left with an image depicting the brand name.

Stuart Watson is creative director at London-based venturethree (I’ve featured the brand agency’s work for Little Chef and XL over on Identity Designed).

There’s a good post on Stuart’s blog about container branding. Worth a read.

A few credits via Logo and Symbol:
— Mitsubishi, by Yataro Iwasaki, 1870.
— Chase, by Tom Geismar, 1961.
— Penguin, by Edward Young, 1935, modified by Jan Tschichold, 1946, and Pentagram, 2003.
— Citroën, by André Citroën, 1903, redesigned by Landor Associates, 2009.
— Mercedes-Benz, 1909, modified 1916, 1937.
— WWF, by Sir Peter Scott, 1961, modified by Landor, 1986.

Published on Logo Design Love

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“Have you ever visited a department store just to admire their graphic design? Me neither. But I might have done that if I was born 50 years earlier. Just look at the images above. Wow. And those are just their logos. Imagine what their posters, folders, price tags, receipts, etc. must have looked like.”

More on Christian’s blog.

One from the archives: 10 handwritten logos.

Published on Logo Design Love

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In 1986, Steve Jobs hired Paul Rand to design a logo for his NeXT educational computer company. Like Antonio, I don’t love the design, but we can learn a lot from the way in which Rand presented his idea to Jobs.

“The only thing Rand knew was that the mysterious NeXT computer was a black cube. With this scant yet meaningful intelligence, Rand developed a unique proposal book for the mark that walked the reader — Mr Jobs — through the step-by-step conceptual process to the final, logical outcome.”

Quoting Steven Heller who shared scans from Rand’s NeXT logo book.

More scans here on imprint, and you can see higher quality photos of the NeXT book by scrolling to the “presentation” section on this page of paul-rand.com.

Steve Jobs was interviewed about working with Paul Rand, and said:

“I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.’”

Here are a few Paul Rand YouTube videos elsewhere on Logo Design Love:

Paul Rand interview
A conversation with Paul Rand
Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good.

Hat-tip @BlairThomson.

Published on Logo Design Love

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• Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good.

And the resulting 1964 wordmark…

“The idea of the red O came about partly to reinforce a design concept to use circular canopies, pumps, and display elements for a distinctive and attractive look. It also served to help people pronounce the name correctly (Mo-bil, not Mo-bile), and of course to add a single memorable and distinctive element to an otherwise very simple lettering style.”

Images/excerpt from Chermayeff & Geismar‘s superb new book, Identify, published by Print Publishing.

You might also like:
An interview with Tom Geismar
An interview with Sagi Haviv

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“What if every designer defaulted to those ubiquitous, standard fonts that we all find stock on our computers?

“Thank a type designer who doesn’t settle for just “standard” but knows how to choose, create, or modify an existing typeface to be a memorable and expressive brand mark.”

More logos here on Adam Ladd’s website.

Via Noah Brier on Twitter.

Published on Logo Design Love

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