Rich Baird

The work of Ben Bos, the Netherlands, 1968–1975. Discover thousands more historical logos at logo-archive.org?utm_source=… Ben Bos’s logos for Kluwer Uitgeverij (1968), Furness Group (1968, with Total Design), Buhrmann-Tetterode (1974) and the City of Dronten (1975). #logos #branding #benbos #totaldesign #dutchdesign #logodesign

When Siemens AG was formed in 1966, it inherited what its own historians describe as “branding chaos”. Rather than commission something new, it promoted the Siemens & Halske mark – Hans Domizlaff’s S&H monogram above the SIEMENS word mark – to umbrella mark for the whole group, and reinterpreted the monogram as the “House of Siemens”. By 1970 the mark looked dated and was hard to read at small sizes. Rather than settle the question on taste, Siemens asked the psychologist Reinhold Bergler to test eight new logotype variants. Test subjects still read the monogram as Siemens & Halske, and found the advertising managers’ favourite, a dotted “i”, poorly legible, faddish and facetious. On 1 October 1973 Siemens dropped the monogram entirely and made the SIEMENS name, in the same lettering as before, the company mark. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/siemens-…

Bilbao’s metro was first proposed in the 1920s, but a plan was only approved in 1987. The underground stations were awarded to Sir Norman Foster and partners after an open competition, and the architects then worked with Otl Aicher to develop a wayfinding system, visual language and logo. Rather than focus on an ‘M’, Otl Aicher favoured an abstract form based on the notion of tunnels and wheels in motion: three overlapping rings of gradually increasing weight from left to right, giving an impression of forward momentum and complementing Foster’s ring-like station entrances. “Otl’s skill was somehow encapsulating the spirit of the idea or a place with a combination of line, colour, graphics,” said Norman Foster. Alongside Munich Airport, Metro Bilbao was Aicher’s last major commission before his death in 1991, and it remains largely unchanged. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/metro-bi…

The work of Paul Rand, USA, 1960–1989. Discover thousands more historical logos at logo-archive.org?utm_source=… Paul Rand’s logos for Westinghouse (1960), Columbus Indiana Visitors Bureau (1973), Tipton Lakes (1980) and Monell Chemical Senses Center (1989). #logos #branding #paulrand #americandesign #logodesign

By the mid-century, Canadian National Railways had replaced steam with diesel, upgraded its fleet and restructured. Yet a study of 4,000 Canadians found the improvements were going unnoticed: the public still saw the railway as old-fashioned. Jim Valkus was brought in to close the gap, and handed the logo to Canadian designer Allan Fleming. On a flight to New York, Fleming sketched ideas on a cocktail napkin, joining the C and N into one continuous line. “It’s a route line that incidentally spells CN,” he explained. “It represents the movement of people, materials, and messages from one point to another.” The flowing ‘signature logo’, later known as the CN ‘Worm’, was a risk and a departure from the railway heralds of the past. In the words of Lorne Perry, who rolled out the programme, it became “a powerful moving billboard for CN’s powerful trains”. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/canadian…

Owls from the archive. Discover thousands more historical logos at logo-archive.org?utm_source=… By Ernst Roch (Owl Bar, Canada, 1973), Hiroyuki Kinoshita (Okinawa Fuji Hotel, Japan, 1973), Akiteru Nakajima (Art and Graphic, Japan, 1981) and Miloš Ćirić (Biblioteka Savremena Društvena Misao, Yugoslavia, 1969). #logos #branding #symbols #owl #logodesign

By the 1980s HongkongBank was considered a pioneer of modern banking in a number of countries, however, its corporate identity didn’t reflect this. Expansion to over 1,000 branches and a controlling stake in New York’s Marine Midland Bank started to create consistency issues. The bank appeared less unified the more it grew. Henry Steiner drew from the bank’s cross-cultural foundation, a British institution founded on ‘sound Scottish banking principles’ that had always adopted local beliefs and traditions. His logo grouped four isosceles triangles into a hexagon that could be read as inward and outward facing arrows pointing east and west, with the ‘X’ at its centre evoking the Saltire, the flag of Scotland. Rather than the blue of the Scottish flag, the logo would be a vibrant red, a colour important to Chinese culture and already used on the bank’s money boxes and passbooks. In the spirit of feng shui, its four arrows were presented to management as the four poles, and business coming from all directions. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/hsbc-log…

In the early 1970s, Siemens commissioned psychologist Reinhold Bergler to test eight new logotypes against its 1966 company mark. The in-house favourite, a dotted "i", was judged faddish and facetious. The result ended a monogram's career of more than seventy years. The full story will on LogoHistories.com this Tuesday.