The Hearst mark, appearing alongside these marks, should not compete with them for visual impact and attention, as a pictorial symbol would. Each of their subsidiary media had its own visual identity. Ut there today, it’s nearly impossible to create a distinctive (yet still good) eagle.īut much more important, Hearst Corporation did not need a symbol at all-eagle or otherwise. For one thing, with all of the eagle symbols o There were two reasons to move away from the eagle. In other words, the new visual identity wouldn’t have to brand the Hearst Corporation itself so much as proclaim Hearst’s ownership of its many established media properties. It needed a trademark that would work with all the existing trademarks of its various subsidiary brands. Hearst Corporation is essentially a parent company. Hearst’s existing mark was a somewhat complicated pictorial image of an eagle with striped wings. The company came to us to help make sure that its identity, which had been around since the 1950s, was ready to take a much more exposed place in the public eye. In 2003, the Hearst Corporation was moving out of offices dispersed all over New York City and into a shiny new glass tower on 57th Street, designed by Norman Foster. That the N and Y align vertically to form NY is like an Easter egg for the viewer to find.Īlthough these two solutions are simply representations of the respective brand names without additional visual elements, they could not be more different from the standpoint of personality: the bold, bright mark for the oil brand and the elegant, neutral mark for the high-end department store.When it makes sense strategically to focus solely on the name, the case may be so overwhelming that it can sometimes mean eliminating an established symbol. The Barneys New York logo, designed by Steff Geissbuhler when he was part of our firm, features unusual spacing and eliminates the apostrophe, which allows the two lines to form a single block. 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.”Ī design intervention in a typographic mark, however simple, has to make sense conceptually and be appropriate to the desired personality. 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.” Oil companies such as Mobil found that they were being zoned out of new communities because of the less than graceful look of their service stations. In the 1950s and 60s, people were immigrating to the suburbs in increasing numbers. “The identity was part of a larger effort led by architect Elliott Noyes who brought us into the project. Tom explains why he chose the red O to give visual distinction to the name: Or, a symbol can help link together many divisions or branches under a single institutional identity-as in the case of the Smithsonian Institution.īut absent a good reason for a symbol, it is always a better idea to start with putting the emphasis on the name and trying to find a simple, focused way-a change of color, an unusual arrangement of letters, a graphic accent or even just a unique lettering style-to make it memorable.Īn early example of this approach is the wordmark Tom Geismar designed with the red O for Mobil Oil exactly 50 years ago. For example, if you have a long name, like in the case of The Chase Manhattan Bank (now simply “Chase”), a symbol may help tie it together as a unit and add visual impact. There are, of course, good reasons to create a symbol as part of an identity program. We find that people are generally willing to learn as little as possible. Using a symbol as part of the logo means that there is an additional element that has to be learned.

This is because visual identities work through familiarity, so any new visual element has to be learned first in order to be established. We advised that they did not need a symbol and turned down the job.Ĭreating a symbol can be a great design exercise, but we try to be very disciplined about only developing a symbol when there is a compelling strategic reason to do so. For over a decade, this international bank had been using a wordmark for their short four-letter name.

Recently a big international bank came to us asking that we design a symbol for them, as Tom Geismar had done many years before for The Chase Manhattan Bank. In this blog series, Sagi Haviv discusses principles of identity design as they manifest in trademarks created by his firm, Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. Enter your work into the Regional Design Annual today for a chance to be spotlighted in the pages of our milestone annual issue.

Cool wordmark logos