History of Logo

Logo has become an integral part of a company, big or small. The more attractive and innovative the logo is the more people remember the company.

What we think of as logo design—simple, iconic images that represent individual brands—is often considered a modern phenomenon. But humans have been identifying and differentiating themselves using emblems and signature marks for hundreds, even thousands of years. In fact, much of the symbolic design work throughout recorded history is all about communicating identity visually.

The history of logos goes back to ancient family crests, hieroglyphs and symbolism. Early versions of logos developed in the Middle Ages (around 1300 AD), as shops and pubs used signage to represent what they did. The first modern logo designs were created in the early 1900s, evolving alongside mass printing.

Around 8000 BC, people in Assyria, Egypt, Carthage, Persia, Media and Sumer created pottery that communicated aesthetic, ethical, cultural, socio-political and religious information.

Even in these distant, primitive stretches of history, people and cultures were representing themselves and their ideas with symbols and illustrations. Nowhere was that more apparent than in Ancient Egypt, starting around the fourth millennium BC. Not only did the Egyptians develop hieroglyphs, a formal writing system, where images represented words or sounds, but they were also prolific artists. Their paintings and sculpture included specific symbolic images and colors that held specific meanings.

Ancient Egyptians used a grid system in their design, much like many logo designers do today.

Between 2125 and 1991 BC, grids appeared in Egyptian designs. This development is essential to logo design, because it ensures that artists effectively maintain proportions and ratios—and guarantees a uniform reproduction of the same design.

In medieval Europe, we see two distinct visual languages appear: heraldic crests and symbolic signage.

Heraldry is a system of assigning design elements societal meaning and status. A certain set of colors and shapes would represent a certain noble family.

Design elements took on meaning and helped people identify their favorite “brands.”

In 1389, King Richard II of England passed a law requiring establishments that brewed beer to hang a sign.

In 1956, Paul Rand designed the iconic, pictographic IBM logo featuring a human eye and a bee.

In the latter half of the 20th century a logo became a must for businesses. If you wanted customers to remember you, you had to have one, and it had to be unique, simple and clean.

Thelogocreative