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The "pig" in the cow logo was added by a Vermont prison inmate who makes the decals for the state police cruisers:
According to the Burlington Free Press, who originally reported the story, Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn said the disclosure of the incident made him chuckle.
"This is not as offensive as it would have been years ago. We can see the humor," Flynn said.
He said the artist has talents that could be used elsewhere. "If that person had used some of that creativeness he or she would not have ended up inside."
Hanson as a heavy metal ban? MMMBop to that! In his series DeathPop Club, designer Mark Hall-Patch created a set of logos for pop bands and singers in the style of heavy metal: Link - via Typo Graphical
Images: Viktor
Hertz/Flickr
We posted about Viktor Hertz' Honest Logos on Neatorama before, but a post by Alice Yoo of the always neat My Modern Met reminded me to check out his new designs: Link - via My Modern Met
Graphic artist Viktor Hertz turned famous logos into "Honest Logos," where he "[reveal] the actual content of the company, what they really should be called. Some are cheap, some might be a bit funny, some will maybe be brilliant."
Link [Flickr] – via Design You Trust | Interview at My Modern Met
Previously on Neatorama: Pictogram Movie Poster by Viktor Hertz
The Heads of State created a poster of imagined logos of companies by the characters listed as attending Gatsby’s party in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel:
Chapter four of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby reads like a VIP guest list of the Jazz Age. Taking inspiration from those pages, this poster is comprised of the business cards and personal stationery of the movers and shakers that attended Gatsby’s parties in the summer of 1922.
The design comes complete with professions, story-specific addresses, old-time telephone exchanges, and a cameo card from a main character.
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Walyou has a neat collection of 24 of the strangest chainsaws ever made. These two “logosploitation” chainsaws above are made by artist Peter Gronquist for fashionista lumberjacks.
Many athletes get corporate sponsorships, but boxer Billy Gibby – also known as Billy the Human Billboard – proudly wears his sponsors’ logos not on his uniform, but on his body. Yep, he got ‘em tattooed:
Since that time, Billy has collected 26 more tattoos from corporate sponsors, including Liberty Tax Service, Host Gator, Grown Up Geek, Cam4 (see video of this tattoo) and a slew of adult sites.
He hopes to go for a Guinness world record for the most corporate logos tattooed on his body. He’s been featured in various print media ranging from Bizarre magazine to the San Diego Tribune. He’s even got his own Facebook fan page, which, from all appearances, wasn’t created by him. He keeps a blog that hasn’t received many updates lately but lists his fees for placement of potential buyers’ logos on his body ($3,000 for a 6-inch by 1-inch chest tattoo, $20,000 for a 6-by-1-inch forehead tattoo).
Joe Peacock wrote this interesting story for AOL News: Link
Video game company logos, as logos for any company, evolve and update if they are lucky enough to survive enough years. Geekosystem has a look at how they’ve changed. Most of these logos look much better now.
Apparently, EA’s old logo confused people.Wikipedia: “Many customers mistook the square/circle/triangle logo for a stylized “EOA.” Though they thought the “E” stood for “Electronic” and “A” for “Arts”, they had no idea what the “O” could stand for, except perhaps the o in “Electronic.” An early newsletter of EA, Farther, even jokingly discussed the topic in one issue, claiming that the square and triangle indeed stood for “E” and “A”, but that the circle was merely “a Nerf ball that got stuck in a floppy drive and has been popping up on our splash screens ever since.” It’s still enough to induce waves of nostalgia in anyone who’s played Starflight.
Logorama is an Oscar-nominated short film by François Alaux and Herve de Crecy about a world populated entirely by corporate logos. The peace of daily life in this world is shattered when a deranged, murderous corporate mascot is spotted by the police. Warning: adult language
Video Link via The Presufer | Official Website
Hugh Hefner and his daughter Christie spent over 50 years building the image of Playboy magazine, which is now up for sale.
Iconix Brand Group, a fashion house, has expressed interest in purchasing Playboy Enterprises, but they have no interest in the famous magazine, its storehouse of interviews, or its photo archive of naked women. Competition from the internet has rendered those resources less valuable. On the other hand…
…the bunny ears brand hearkens back to an era when Playboy was widely read and epitomized the idea of the urbane sophisticate who appreciates the finer things that the swinging bachelor lifestyle promises.
So the company is seeking a partner in the publishing world to take the magazine and other Playboy-related assets. All they want is the logo.
There’s something very familiar about the logo of the Ji’a'po fast food chain in China …
Ji’a’po is a fast food chain founded in 2007 and now there are about a hundred stores in China. What make people impressed the most about this chain however is the logo, as it looks so much alike as KFC’s one.
Netizens in China start making fun of these two nearly identical image and calling Ji’a’po is the lost sister of Colonel Sanders from Kentucky Fried Chicken.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by sesame.
The next time you open a bottle of beer, don't just chug the brew - take a look at the logo on the label. Ever wonder who St. Pauli Girl actually is? Or why there's the mysterious number "33" on Rolling Rock beer bottles? Read on. Neatorama takes a look at the Stories Behind 7 Famous Beer Logos:
Photo: safoocat
[Flickr]
What's not to like about the St. Pauli Girl? She's blonde, big bosomed, and brings us big frothy mugs of beer! But what most people don't realize is that she's not exactly just a waitress. Yep, St. Pauli is the famous red light district of Hamburg, Germany.
In 1977, St. Pauli Girl Beer started to choose a spokesmodel to represent the beer brand and appear on the popular St. Pauli Girl poster. In 1999, they started using Playboy magazine playmates as the girl (the 2008 St. Pauli Girl is Irina Voronina). Here's the gallery of St. Pauli Girls from 1977 to 2007: Link
This one's pretty straightforward. PBR was originally named Best Select, then Pabst Select and finally Pabst Blue Ribbon, named because the practice of tying blue ribbons around the beer bottleneck from 1882 until 1916.
Pabst advertisement from 1911 (Source)
The
mysterious '33' has been on the label of Rolling Rock since the Latrobe
Brewing Company brewed its first batch in 1939, but what does it actually
stand for? Theories about the origin of the cryptic '33', some undoubtedly
hatched in bar arguments, range from the year 1933 (the year Prohibition
was repealed), how many steps it took to walk from the brewmaster's office
to the brewing floor, the number of the racing horse on the label, and
even the highest level of Freemasonry (33rd degree).
According to James Tito, the former CEO of Latrobe Brewing, the number '33' may actually be an accident. When the founders of the company came up with the slogan
Rolling Rock - From the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe, we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you.
someone wrote '33' at the end to indicate the number of words, but the bottle printer mistakenly incorporated it into the label graphic. They decided to keep the 33 instead of having to scrap and replace the bottles. Even though the slogan had been changed several times in the history of Rolling Rock, the company had made sure to use the same number of words. (Source - see argument against this reasoning within)
(Image: Gravy Bread)
The logo of Heineken is rather simple: it consists of the five-pointed red star and the word "Heineken" in green, but there's something remarkable about it: Alfred Henry (Freddy) Heineken, the grandson of the founder of the company, Gerard Heineken, helped develop the company's own typeface (common today, but rare back then). He insisted that the 'e' in the logo should look friendlier. Indeed, the three letters 'e' in the logo are slightly tilted backwards to make it seem that they are smiling.
Arthur
Guinness brewed his first stout in 1759, it took Guinness over 100 years
later to select its logo - the harp of Brian Boru - a gaelic harp in Ireland's
heraldic emblem and a symbol of Irish unity, not to mention the Euro coin.
By the way, Ireland is the only country in the world with a musical instrument
as a national emblem.
Brian Boru was the king of Ireland that ruled from 1002 to 1014 and protected and/or freed - depending on who you ask - the Irish people from the Vikings. The harp named after him, however, was actually much, much older. According to Celtic myth, the gaelic harp was owned by the Dagda, a king/god/father-figure, that can summon the seasons.
There's actually a real instrument named the harp of Brian Boru. It's one of three surviving medieval harps dating from the 14th or 15th century and is on display at Trinity College Dublin.
By the way, if you are named O'Brien or O'Brian, then you're a descendant of King Brian Boru - so a toast (Guinness, of course) is in order!
Stella Artois was launched as a Christmas beer in 1926 - its name is a combination of the latin word for "star" and Sebastian Artois, a brewmaster in the Den Hoorn Brewery (founded 1366) in Louvain, Belgium.
The logo of Stella Artois beer reflects the beer's origin - Den Hoorn is Dutch for "The Horn," and the now-defunct brewery lives on as the horn prominently displayed on the top of the label of every bottle of Stella Artois beer. The fancy frame around the name is also in the style of Flemish architecture in the city.
(L) Bass & Co's Pale Ale, the very first trademark registered in the
UK (1876) at the Intellectual
Property Office; (R) current logo
Bass Pale Ale's Red Triangle logo may be simple, but it's pretty darned special: it's the very first trademark registered in Britain. When trademark registration law took effect on January 1, 1876, a Bass employee was sent to wait overnight outside the registrar's office in order to be the first in line to register a trademark the next morning. Bass & Co. Brewery got the first two trademarks, the first being the Bass Red Triangle for their pale ale and the second the Bass Red Diamond for their strong ale.
Bass is also the most frequently featured beer in fine arts. Bottles of Bass beer can be seen in Manet's 1882 painting Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
Bar in den Folies-Bergère by Edouard Manet (1882)
Okay, so this isn't exactly about beer logos - but brewers often advertise their beers in outrageous manners, and there's nothing quite as outrageous as the notorious Old Milwaukee's Swedish Bikini Team:
Ironically, there's nothing Swedish about the Swedish Bikini Team - the women were all played by American actresses wearing platinum blonde wigs!
______
Obviously we haven't talked about many other beer logos. So if your favorite beer isn't listed here, why not tell us all about it in the comment section?
______
If you like the article above, take a look at the rest of Neatorama's Logo series:
- Evolution
of Tech Logos
- Evolution
of Car Logos
- Stories
Behind 10 Famous Food Logos
- Stories
Behind Hollywood Studio Logos
Do the two logos look similar to you? They do, according to the trademark attorneys of Re/Max, a national real estate franchise. They’re challenging the trademark application of a real estate startup Rehava, which has a new commission structure that is different than the established culture:
Adam Scoville, Re/Max’s legal counsel, said he can explain.
First of all, both names start with "r" and have logos with accent lines near the letter "e," he said.
"It goes beyond that," Scoville added. "If you chop the top off of the ‘h,’ you (almost) have the ‘m’ in Re/Max. The next letter is an ‘a,’ and if you take the ‘v’ then you have half of an ‘x.’ "
Steve deGuzman, Rehava’s broker-in-charge, said he doesn’t buy it. He said the trademark challenge is harassment and a form of corporate bullying that will cost his firm thousands of dollars.
"It’s a huge distraction, particularly for a startup and also in this kind of a market," deGuzman said.
He suspects the Colorado-based franchise is challenging the trademarkbecause of Rehava’s controversial commission rebates, which some in the industry see as a threat to traditional compensation standards.
Photo: fengschwing [Flickr]
Flickr user fengschwing (of The Darling Downs blog) posted a collection of Superman’s various S-shield logos from his collection of action figures. Who knew that the Man of Steel is also quite fashionable? Link – via Super Punch
You don't have to go far to find fascinating stories behind some of the world's most famous logos. Just take a look inside your kitchen cabinets ...
Morton Salt, as its name clearly states, makes salt. The company got its start as a small Midwestern sales agency in 1848. In 1889, Joy Morton bought a major interest in the company and in 1910, he changed its name to Morton Salt Company.
The Morton Umbrella Girl got her start in 1914. The logo was produced as part of a series of ads in Good Housekeeping. The concept was that Morton Salt - unlike regular salt of the day - poured without clumps, even in damp weather. The company added magnesium carbonate as an absorbing agent to ensure that its table salt poured freely (it had since been changed to calcium silicate).
At first, the advertising agency suggested "Even in rainy weather, it flows freely" as the company's motto. Morton felt that it was too long, and the motto was changed to the catchier "When it Rains it Pours."
Source: The History of the Umbrella Girl
Did
you ever wonder why Heinz Ketchup bottle has a label that says "57
Varieties"? (Photo: williamhartz
[Flickr])
Well, it turns out that while riding a train in New York City in 1896, Henry John Heinz noticed an ad for "21 styles of shoes." He thought that it was a clever way to advertise the great number of choices of canned and bottled foods that his company sold. Back then, the company already sold more than 60 items but Heinz put together "5" (his lucky number) and "7" (his wife's lucky number) to get "57 varieties".
That number must be really lucky, because H.J. Heinz Company grew to be a behemoth in the food industry. It currently sells more than 5,700 varieties in 200 countries and territories.
Oh, and by the way, Heinz' first product wasn't ketchup. It was bottled horseradish made from his mother's own recipe.
Sources: Snopes (a very interesting history on the life of H.J. Heinz) and Heinz
In 1925, Minnesota Valley Canning Company wanted to market its canned peas (a particularly large variety of peas, actually), so it came up with an unusual mascot: a grumpy grey gnome, wearing a scruffy bearskin, stooping and scowling. If that doesn't seem like a mascot that would induce you to buy products, you'd be right.
So the company hired an ad agency to revamp the mascot's image. A young ad man named Leo Burnett (who later became a legend in advertising) was assigned the task and he revamped it into a smiling green giant wearing a skimpy tunic, wreath and boots made of leaves. He also named it "Jolly." (Source)
The Jolly Green Giant was such a successful marketing ploy that in 1950 the company changed its name into Green Giant.
The company's first TV commercial in 1953 featured the Jolly Green Giant as a puppet (in a stop-motion animation) roaming the valley and saying "fo fum fi fe." What they didn't anticipate was how scary he turned out to be to children! Needless to say, they didn't continue the ads ...
In 1978, the town of Blue Earth, Minnesota, put a 55-foot (~ 17 m) tall fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant to welcome visitors to the local Blue Earth Green Giant plant. Every Christmas, the townspeople put a red scarf around its neck, so it doesn't get too cold!
1921
photo credit: Illustration de Benjamin Rabier, ProLitteris Zurich;
1949 red cow via Les
Arts Decoratifs; current logo via wikipedia
At the end of World War I, a French cheesemaker named Léon Bel had a lot of leftover comté, gruyere, and emmental cheeses and decided to melt them down to create a new type of cheese.
In 1921, Bel saw a traveling meat truck nicknamed "Wachkyrie," after "Valkyries," the creatures in Norse mythology that determine the victors in the battle, and thought that it would make a good name for his cheese. Well, actually a pun of the name: La Vache qui Rit ("The Laughing Cow"). Bel commissioned Benjamin Rabier, who later became a famous cartoon artist, to draw the laughing cow logo.
The original La Vache qui Rit wasn't laughing. It also wasn't red and it didn't wear the tiny cheese earrings. Bel asked his printer Vercasson to make the changes - but that's not all that Vercasson did: he also trademarked the "Red Cow" design. Bel was later forced to pay for the right to use his own logo! (Source)
If you look closely at the cow's earring, you'll see that it's actually a package of La Vache qui Rit cheese, with a picture of the red cow on it. And yes, that cow has earrings of cheese, which have another picture of a red cow ad infinitum. (It's an example of the Droste effect, if you must know).
But why is the cow laughing? (Indeed, that is the motto of the cheese) Well, given that the Laughing Cow cheese is now sold in more than 90 countries, with 125 portions of the cheese wedge eaten every second around the world - it seems that the cow is laughing all the way to the bank!
In 1889, Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood developed a ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour. All they needed was a name. One evening, Rutt heard a song called "Old Aunt Jemima," sung by a black-faced vaudeville performer clad in apron and a bandana headband, and so "Aunt Jemima Manufacturing Company" was born.
A year later, the duo sold their business to R.T. Davis, who brought Aunt Jemima to life - literally - by hiring Nancy Green, a former slave to play her. Green portrayed Aunt Jemima for 30 years till her death in 1923. Davis' campaign was so successful that people thought that Aunt Jemima was a real Southern cook who came up with the pancake mix recipe. Since then, six more women had portrayed the jovial cook (Source)
(Photos: Nancy Green via African American Registry; Anna Robinson via NY Times/Bettmann/Corbis; Edith Wilson via Redhotjazz; Rosie Lee Moore Hall via RTIS; Aylene Lewis via Stuff from the Park; not pictured: Ethel Ernestine Harper and Ann Short Harrington)
In her book Aunt
Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus
The story of how Betty Crocker came to be is quite interesting. In the early 1920s, the Washburn Crosby Company of Minneapolis (a big milling company that later merged with other companies to form General Mills) got a lot of mails from its customers asking baking questions.
In 1921, the company thought that it would be better to sign the responses personally, so they combined the last name of its director, William Crocker, with the first name "Betty" (chosen because "it sounded cheery, wholesome, and folksy.") (Source) The famous Betty Crocker signature was penned by a company secretary who won a contest.
The whole Betty Crocker persona was carefully engineered to appeal to women:
A group of college educated women were hired to develop Betty’s persona. Her picture and signature appeared in print ads. Cooking demonstrations were organized showing off Betty’s “solutions to domestic woes.” [...]
On the radio, Betty could speak to her loyal followers. Cooking and Gold Medal Flour were central to the script. But so were housekeeping, time management, friends, family, and husbands. “If you load a man’s stomach with boiled cabbage and greasy fried potatoes,” Betty once told listeners, “can you wonder that he wants to start a fight, or go out and commit a crime?” But she also reminded women that their role as homemakers was important, and that their aspirations could be “as great as woman could have in any occupation.” (Source)
In 1924, Betty Crocker debuted on the radio (on the nation's first cooking show). In 1936, Betty Crocker got a face: artist Neysa McMein brought together all women in the General Mills' Home Service Department and created a composite face. Over the next eight decades, Betty had several makeovers to update her look to fit the times!
Images: Susan Marks - via Minnesota
Public Radio
(If you're interested in finding out more about Betty Crocker, Susan
Marks wrote the definitive book, Finding
Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food
Legends have it that Chef Boyardee was named for the men who created him (Boyd, Art, and Dennis), and given the other made-up food mascots, you'd be forgiven if you believed it.
Chef Boiardi appearing in his own TV commercial, c. 1953 [YouTube
Link]
But in this case, there actually was a real-life Chef Boyardee! His name was Ettore "Hector" Boiardi (1897-1985). Boiardi immigrated to the United States when he was 16 years old and worked himself up to head chef at the Plaza Hotel in New York. When Chef Boiardi opened his own restaurant, so many of his customers asked for extra portions of his spaghetti sauce to take home that he opened a factory to keep up with orders. To help Americans pronounce his name correctly, he named his brand Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (later the company got rid of the hypens).
In
1932, Charles W. Lubin pooled his money with his brother-in-law to purchase
a small chain of bakeries called the Community Bake Shops. When he came
out with a new line of cheesecakes, his wife Tillie told him that he should
name it after their daughter, Sara Lee.
The Sara Lee cheesecakes were so popular that in 1950, Lubin renamed his company the Kitchens of Sara Lee. When his company was bought out by Consolidated Foods, that company also renamed itself Sara Lee Corporation!
The real Sara Lee Lubin never held management position in the company, though she did appear as a spokesperson in some ads. Today, Sara Lee Lubin Schupf is a philantrophist and devotes her time to support the advancement of girls and women in science. (Source)
Quick: what does the Quaker Oats cereal have to do with the religious Christian denomination The Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers? Turns out ... nothing - only clever advertising.
In 1877, Henry D. Seymour and William Heston founded a mill in Ravenna, Ohio, and named it the Quaker Mill. There are conflicting stories as to how the name came to be. One legend has it that Seymour chose the name after reading an encyclopedia entry on the Quakers:
"The name was chosen when Quaker Mill partner Henry Seymour found an encyclopedia article on Quakers and decided that the qualities described — integrity, honesty, purity — provided an appropriate identity for his company's oat product." (Source)
Another story said that Heston was walking on the streets of Cincinnati when he ran across a picture of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania and a famous Quaker (Source). In whichever case, later that year the company trademarked the Quaker Man, described as "The figure of a man in Quaker garb." It was the first US trademark ever registered for a breakfast cereal.
The original 1877 Quaker Man was a full-length picture of a Quaker holding a scroll with the word "pure" on it (just in case the integrity/honesty/purity point didn't get across). In 1946, graphic designer Jim Nash created a black and white head portrait of the smiling Quaker Man and in 1957, Haddon Sundblom made the full-color portrait. The last update to the logo was in 1972, when Saul Bass created the stylized graphic that still appears on Quaker Oats product packages today.
In 1928, Frank Daniel Gerber and his son Daniel Frank Gerber (yes, I know) of Fremont Canning Company wanted to promote their new product: baby food. The company had been a small packager of peas, beans, and fruits in rural Michigan. Daniel convinced his father to manufacture and sell strained baby food (at the time, preparing food for infant was a tedious chore of cooking and mashing things).
The
Gerbers wanted a baby face to brand their new baby food, and held a contest.
Amongst the many drawings and paintings submitted (including some elaborate
oil paintings of baby portraits) was an unfinished charcoal sketch by
Dorothy Hope Smith of Boston. Dorothy drew a five month old baby with
tousled hair and bright blue eyes, using her neighbor's baby as a model.
She offered to finish the sketch if she won, but the judges decided to
use it as it was.
The Gerber Baby turned out to be so popular that over a decade later, the company changed its name to Gerber Products Company.
Oh, and who was the original Gerber Baby? Her name is Ann Turner Cook, a mystery author and former high school English literature teacher. You can find out more about Ann and her three published mystery books at her official website.
If you enjoyed this article, you'll love the rest of the Logo series on Neatorama:
 |
 |
 |
| Evolution of Tech Logos | Evolution of Car Logos | Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos |
Barend Massow Hemmes of Massow Concept Cycles along with Polar cycles of Doncaster UK created what is probably the most awesome motorcycle I’ve ever laid eyes on: the Jaguar "leaper" cat logo concept bike, made from stainless steel.
Just how awesome is that? Link – via Modern Urban Living
Logos are everywhere. Because of this, only a few can rise among the noise — and often it’s the more unique logos that are most memorable. Sometimes to be unique, you’ve also got to be weird. In this post, we showcase twenty lovably strange logos that work.
The pictured logo is for Rehabilitation Hospital Corporation of America. Makes sense to me! Link -via the Presurfer
Ryan of Business Pundit blog compiled some parody corporate logos that reflect the world’s current economic crisis (The Ford/Fail logo is originally from Ironic Sans) – Link – Thanks Mu!
Previously on Neatorama:
You see these opening logos every time you go to the movies, but have you ever wondered who is the boy on the moon in the DreamWorks logo? Or which mountain inspired the Paramount logo? Or who was the Columbia Torch Lady? Let's find out:
In 1994, director Steven Spielberg, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and record producer David Geffen (yes, they make the initial SKG on the bottom of the logo) got together to found a new studio called DreamWorks.
Spielberg wanted the logo for DreamWorks to be reminiscent of Hollywood's golden age. The logo was to be a computer generated image of a man on the moon, fishing, but Visual Effects Supervisor Dennis Muren of Industrial Light and Magic, who has worked on many of Spielberg's films, suggested that a hand-painted logo might look better. Muren asked his friend, artist Robert Hunt to paint it.
Hunt also sent along an alternative version of the logo, which included a young boy on a crescent moon, fishing. Spielberg liked this version better, and the rest is history. Oh, and that boy? It was Hunt's son, William.
The DreamWorks logo that you see in the movies was made at ILM from paintings by Robert Hunt, in collaboration with Kaleidoscope Films (designers of the original storyboards), Dave Carson (director), and Clint Goldman (producer) at ILM.
Photo courtesy of Robert Hunt
- Thanks for the neat story, Robert!
In 1924, studio publicist Howard Dietz designed the "Leo The Lion" logo for Samuel Goldwyn's Goldwyn Picture Corporation. He based it on the athletic team of his alma mater Columbia University, the Lions. When Goldwyn Pictures merged with Metro Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures, the newly formed MGM retained the logo.
Since then, there have been five lions playing the role of "Leo The Lion". The first was Slats, who graced the openings of MGM's silent films from 1924 to 1928. The next lion, Jackie, was the first MGM lion whose roar was heard by the audience. Though the movies were silent, Jackie's famous growl-roar-growl sequence was played over the phonograph as the logo appeared on screen. He was also the first lion to appear in Technicolor in 1932.
The third lion and probably most famous was Tanner (though at the time Jackie was still used concurrently for MGM's black and white films). After a brief use of an unnamed (and very mane-y) fourth lion, MGM settled on Leo, which the studio has used since 1957.
The company motto "Ars Gratia Artis" means "Art for Art's Sake."
Sources: MGM Media Center | Wikipedia entry on "Leo The Lion"
In 1935, Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Film Company (back then mainly a theater-chain company) merged to create Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (they later dropped the hyphen).
The original Twentieth Century Pictures logo was created in 1933 by famed landscape artist Emil Kosa, Jr. After the merger, Kosa simply replaced "Pictures, Inc." with "Fox" to make the current logo. Besides this logo, Kosa was also famous for his matte painting of the Statue of Liberty ruin at the end of the Planet of the Apes (1968) movie, and others.
Perhaps just as famous as the logo is the "20th Century Fanfare", composed by Alfred Newman, then musical director for United Artists.
Paramount Pictures Corporation was founded in 1912 as Famous Players Film Company by Adolph Zukor, and the theater moguls the Frohman brothers, Daniel and Charles.
The Paramount "Majestic Mountain" logo was first drawn as a doodle by W.W. Hodkinson during a meeting with Zukor, based on the Ben Lomond Mountain from his childhood in Utah (the live action logo made later is probably Peru's Artesonraju). It is the oldest surviving Hollywood film logo.
The original logo has 24 stars, which symbolized Paramount's then 24 contracted movie stars (it's now 22 stars, though no one could tell me why they reduced the number of stars). The original matte painting has also been replaced with a computer generated mountain and stars.
Paramount logo history, for more details, see: CLG
Wiki
Warner Bros. (yes, that's legally "Bros." not "Brothers") was founded by four Jewish brothers who emigrated from Poland: Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner. Actually, those aren't the names that they were born with. Harry was born "Hirsz," Albert was "Aaron," Sam was "Szmul," and Jack was "Itzhak." Their original surname is also unknown - some people said that it is "Wonsal," "Wonskolaser" or even Eichelbaum, before it was changed to "Warner." (Sources: Doug Sinclair | Tody Nudo's Hollywood Legends)
In the beginning, Warner Bros. had trouble attracting top talents. In 1925, at the urging of Sam, Warner Bros. made the first feature-length "talking pictures" (When he heard of Sam's idea, Harry famously said "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"). That got the ball rolling for the studio and made Warner Bros. famous.
The Warner Bros. logo, the WB Shield, has actually gone many revisions. Jason Jones and Matt Williams of CLG Wiki have the details:
Warner Bros. Logo History - see the full details at CLG
Wiki
If you're interested in WB cartoons, you can't go wrong with Dave Mackey's Field guide: Link
Columbia Pictures was founded in 1919 by the brothers Harry and Jack Cohn, and Joe Brandt as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales. Many of the studio's early productions were low-budget affairs, so it got nicknamed "Corned Beef and Cabbage." In 1924, the brothers Cohn bought out Brandt and renamed their studio Columbia Pictures Corporation in effort to improve its image.
Vintage Columbia Pictures Logo (Source: Reel
Classics)
The
studio's logo is Columbia, the female personification of America. It was
designed in 1924 and the identity of the "Torch Lady" model
was never conclusively determined (though more than a dozen women had
claimed to be "it.")
In her 1962 autobiography, Bette Davis claimed that Claudia Dell was the model, whereas in 1987 People Magazine named model and Columbia bit-actress Amelia Batchler as the girl. In 2001, the Chicago Sun-Times named a local woman who worked as an extra at Columbia named Jane Bartholomew as the model. Given how the logo has changed over the years, it may just be that all three were right! (Source)
The current Torch Lady logo was designed in 1993 by Michael J. Deas, who was commissioned by Sony Pictures Entertainment to return the lady to her "classic" look.
Though people thought that actress Annette Bening was the model, it was actually a Louisiana homemaker and muralist named Jenny Joseph that modeled the Torch Lady for Deas. Rather than use her face, however, Deas drew a composite face made from several computer-generated features (Source: Roger Ebert, Photo: Kathy Anderson)
Obviously, we're missing the stories of the logos of many other film studios. We'd love to hear from you if you know any! Please tell us in the comment section.
If you like this article, please check out Neatorama's articles on logos:
Christophe Szpajdel isn’t just any ol’ logo designer – he’s the self-proclaimed dark lord of black-metal logos. The Belgian designer has drawn over 7,000 black- and death-metal bands from all over the world.
Strangely, Christophe is also a forestry engineer and works in retail to support his artistry: Link
The Peace Sign, one of the most widely known symbols in the world, was first designed and drawn on home-made banners and badges in London, England on February 21, 1958, when CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ) was launched at a public meeting but has since been apropriated by scores of different protest movements, from hippies in 1960s America and to the rest of the world, it is known more broadly as the peace symbol.
