8. The meaning of a Logo

Matilda Brooks

A logo is the visual representation of what the company wants to communicate to their audience, the logo is always specific to the brand and the audience they are attempting to communicate with, for example Billabong uses a wave symbol in their logo to communicate with an audience who surfs, or Swarovski uses a swan to communicate the elegance and style of their products, communicating with the elegant and stylish audience. Lee explains that corporate business logos represent the companies’ message (Lee I., 2016h). The symbols and logo functions as the development of the brand identity design (Lee I., 2016). The symbols of a logo can communicate a specific message to a specific audience; for example, the Commonwealth Bank logo represents their trustworthy nature and loyalty to its’ customers.

This is done through the use of the ‘Southern Cross symbol’ the yellow diamond shape (cut out by the black shape) follows the same line or shape as the Southern Cross. The Southern Cross is representative of Australia’s knowledge, loyalty and trust, it can be found on our own Australian flag; which reflects the trust and appreciation that is expressed when using this symbol. Thus, this symbol communicates the loyalty and trust they will receive if they become customers, this message is extremely important to communicate as a bank, where customers expect to have to trust, the logo reinforces this.

Another example of an important, symbolic corporate logo is the Google logo. The company uses all primary, bright colours to communicate personality, individuality and playfulness (Wiley, 2010).

As Google has such a large audience, the company seems to want to deliver a ‘fun’ or playful image (Wiley, 2010). They want to communicate to their large audience that they are no ordinary search engine, but they are much more (Wiley, 2010). The bright colours and recognisable typeface is tweaked and changed very slightly over the many years in business. The design gave much room for the brands identity and thus contributed to more exposure of their message of having a bold individuality and recognisability to their wide audience.

Lee, I. (2016). Encyclopedia of e-commerce development, implementation, and management. Hershey, USA: Business Science Reference.

Wiley, J. (2010). The Google design, turned up a notch. Retrieved from https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-design-turned-up-notch.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR1ocGND2jiGDDmrSGXrJ40SIvIaoy5LlgffKvDh7u-YvjkCYpiEh3vE-eQ