Apple
Apple Computer Corporation had its humble beginnings in 1976 when it was established by three individuals - Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and principal investor Ronald Wayne.
At its inception, Apple had a very complicated logo designed by co-founder Ronald Wayne, with a picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree with a phrase from Wordsworth: "Newton 'A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought Alone." This logo was used during the era of Apple-1 and it made Jobs think that the complex logo may be one of the reasons for the low sales of the Apple-1.
Soon they had to prepare for the display at the first West Coast Faire (a technology trade show) and it was important to have a brand new logo that reflected all that Apple stands for - simplicity and great design. A young art director, Rob Janoff was assigned this task.
Since Apple computers were distinguished from the rest by their ability to display many colors, Rob made this new logo of an apple in colorful horizontal stripes of rainbow colors and with a bite taken out of it on one side. Though it is rumored that this bite taken out of the apple was to signify that this is from the world of "bits and bytes", Janoff has stated that he did so to prevent this apple from appearing like a cherry tomato. The apple design was, obviously, taken from the name of the company. The resulting logo was a lot more attractive and eye-catching and it stayed so until 1998.
Apple launched its new iMac in 1998 and with it, they wanted a new logo to suit the sober-looking lineup of its products. While the apple with a bite taken out of it remained, the rainbow color went and got replaced by a gradient chrome silver color which is currently in use.
Canon
Canon had recognized the importance of having a global presence right from the start and that can be seen from its logos from that time. This company actually hired a specialized advertising designer to create its logo and used a typeface that was never used before in Europe or America.
Its first camera was launched in 1934 and named Kwanon, which was the Buddhist goddess of mercy. The logo included the words Kwanon and a picture of the goddess with several arms and flames.
Just like other companies, Canon also tried to simplify its logo and at the same time make it as noticeable as possible. Canon trademarked its new logo in 1935, but it still kept on evolving to make improvements in its design to make it more balanced. This evolution of the Canon logo went on till 1956, when the logo assumed its form that we are familiar with today.
The search giant we know as Google was founded in 1996 by two Stanford University computer science graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The name is derived from Googol, which means one followed by 100 zeros. Sergey Brin, who had self-taught the free computer graphics program GIMP, created the first logo in rainbow colored Catall BQ font for his company in this program and later even added an exclamation mark to it to mimic the Yahoo! logo (as Yahoo! was the major search engine of that time).
In 1999, Google hired Stanford's Consultant Art Professor Ruth Kedar to design the now famous Google logo. Ruth Kedar says, "There were a lot of different color iterations. We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order, we put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the idea that Google doesn't follow the rules."
The last overhaul that this logo received was in 2010, when it used a typeface similar to the previous logo, but featured a distinctly orange colored "o" in place of the previously yellowish "o". Also, there was a subtle shadow rendered in a different shading style.
IBM
IBM as a company was formed in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) because it was actually a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation and the Bundy Manufacturing Company and hence such a complicated and long name. Therefore, the early logo of this company had the letters ITR, which was a major part. Just after this merger, the logo was changed to reflect the change and it contained both ITR and CTR initials in 1911.
CTR adapted the new name International Business Machines Corporation in 1924, and hence the old logo had to be replaced with a new one. The old logo with the ornate rococo font was replaced by one in which it was written Business Machines in san serif font, written in the form of a globe and the word International as its equator. This suggested a more global role for the company.
With the advent of computing, IBM decided that it was time to change more and adapt to the new technology. It decided to do away with it its punched-card tabulating system and favor computers. The new logo sported a Beton Bold font.
Then in 1956, company CEO Thomas J. Watson, Sr appointed Tom Watson, Jr. as the CEO, before he died. The new CEO had a different vision for the company and so he decided to change the logo one more time. Paul Rand was hired to design the new logo in such a way that it would be subtle and will appear more grounded and solid and exuded confidence.
After this, Paul Rand made one more change to the logo to reflect speed and dynamism of the company. The solid font was replaced by stripes. This logo has been since used in IBM.
Kodak
Kodak understood the importance of brand recognition as it was the first company to integrate its name and looks into one symbol when it started in 1907. Since 1935, Kodak started incorporating its complete name in its logo which predominantly contained the colors yellow and red to make it eye catchy.
Kodak tried to introduce a flip page as a logo in 1960. In 1971, that logo design was dropped in favor of a complicated design in the form of a box and graphic "K" element. In 1987, Kodak changed the fonts of this logo to make it more contemporary, but retained the overall design.
Following a general trend of companies trying to simplify their logo designs, Kodak too decided to simplify its logo in 1996 by removing the boxes. This 1996 logo was given a slight facelift in 2006 by replacing the "a" and "d" to a more rounded and contemporary form.
LG
The Korean company we know today as LG had its humble beginnings as a merger of two different companies owned by Koo In-Hwoi - Lucky (Lak-Hui), which was a chemical cosmetic company, and Goldstar, which was a radio manufacturing plant. Known as Lucky Goldstar since then, the company was renamed as LG Electronics in 1995.
The LG logo in use today is of symbolic importance to the company. According to LG, the letters "L" and "G" in a circle symbolize the world, future, youth, humanity and technology. The red color represents friendliness along with a strong impression of the company's commitment to the best.
The circle symbolizes the globe, the stylized image of a smiling face conveys friendliness and approachability, while the one eye conveys goal-oriented, focused and confident. The LG Grey represents technology and reliability. The logo is asymmetrical and it has been deliberately created thus to represent the creativity and adaptability to changes of this company.
While it is a well-known fact that LG stands for Lucky Goldstar, the company now denies it and rather states that it stands for "Life is Good" or simply LG.
Microsoft
When Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the first product of this company was the computer language BASIC. Being a software company and since the software runs on hardware based on a microprocessor, they named this company taking the first few letters of the word microprocessor and software to create Micro-Soft (with a hyphen separating the two words). The company logo was also designed to reflect the name of the company at that time.
They decided to drop the hyphen in the same year and rename the company Microsoft, and in the process also changed the logo accordingly. The new green Microsoft logo with an artistic O (nicknamed "Blibbet" by company employees) was used till 1987 as the company logo.
Microsoft decided to introduce a new corporate logo in 1987 and did away with the "Blibbet" (causing Dave Norris to run an internal joke campaign called "Save the Blibbet"). Nevertheless, the company had made up its mind to get a new logo designed by Scott Baker using Hevletica italic typeface. The slant was an indicator of motion and speed. This came to be known as the "Pacman logo" because the O in this logo looked like the video game character Pacman, with a distinctive cut, to subtly differentiate between the Micro and Soft part.
Microsoft added the tagline "Where do you want to go today?" to this logo below the original logo in 1994. Microsoft retained the logo design, but opted to change the tagline in 2006 to "Your potential. Our passion" with the tagline also written in italics typeface. In 2011, Microsoft yet again changed its tagline to "Be What's Next." and this tagline is in normal typeface.
Mozilla Firefox
When Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross first created the open source browser in 2001, they named it Phoenix and this is visible in its first logo. But there were some trademark issues which forced them to change the name of their browser to Firebird, which allowed them to retain the original logo since the meaning is the same.
When it was later found out that even the name Firebird was already trademarked, they had to quickly find an alternative name. They decided to name it Firefox in 2003 and that name was the final name of this browser. Accordingly, they got the logo changed by professional interface designer John Hicks to a Firefox engulfing the blue globe representing the world. Was it a play on the Microsoft Internet Explorer logo getting engulfed by this new promising browser? We do not know.
Nevertheless, this has remained the logo of the Firefox browser since then and has changed very little, save for some colors of the continents using a lighter blue color to be able to differentiate the oceans from the land mass.
Nokia
In Finnish, the word "Nokia" means a dark and furry animal called the Pine Marten weasel. The name of the company Nokia came from the company set up on the banks of the river Nokiavirta in the town of Nokia in 1868 by Knut Fredrik Idestam as a second groundwood pulp mill in his new business established in 1865. Nokia has therefore been in the communication business right from the start as this company manufactured paper, which was a major means of communication back then.
It is not exactly known if it is really true, but it is generally believed that since the company was situated on the banks of the Nokiavirta river, the first Nokia Company logo was that of a diving salmon fish, possibly from that river.
Finnish Rubber Works was founded in 1898, which would eventually become part of Nokia and along with Nokia Ab and the Finish Cable works, would form Nokia Corporation in 1967.
The current slogan of Nokia - "Connecting People", which is part of its present logo, was invented by Ove Strandberg.
Xerox
At its inception in 1906, the company Xerox Corporation was known as The Haloid Photographic Company, which manufactured photographic paper and equipment. In 1938, Chester Carlson invented a technique called xerography, now known as the photocopy technique. Despite his persistent efforts, he could not find a financer for his invention. Being turned down by the big giants such as IBM, GE and RCA, Carlson turned to The Haloid Photographic Company, which decided to back his invention. The company made the first photocopying machine named Haloid Xerox 14.
The company's name was later changed to Haloid Xerox in 1958. You will notice in the company logos, that the original word Haloid, which used to be prominent in earlier logos, was gradually replaced in prominence by the word Xerox in the 1948 logo and in the 1949 logo. Haloid Xerox made a brief appearance in the logo in 1958, but was dropped three years later when it was completely replaced by Xerox in 1961. This was due to the unprecedented success enjoyed by the photocopying machines named thus.
Xerox retained this logo from 1961 to 2004. In 2004, Xerox decided that it does not want to be associated just with photocopy machines as had been happening over the years; they wanted to diversify. They changed the logo just a little bit by removing the words "The Document Company", while retaining the rest of the logo.
Since they had already decided to get away from the complete association with photocopying machines, in 2008 they changed the font of the logo and added a ball with a stylish X.
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