This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover over 5500 of history’s greatest designs from the world’s finest designers. Updated every single day. Always find the logo inspiration you need for your next logo or branding project. Start here.

By the early 1970s, the visual identity of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) had started to lack coherence. Vehicles carried several different colour schemes and two different logos.

As a new light-rail system was being built it was felt that Muni also needed an identity that would be capable of unifying its expanding services and present the transport network as being more modern.

In 1974, Muni commissioned Walter Landor & Associates to devise a new cohesive identity programme. This would include a new logo, colour palette, vehicle livery, bus stop signage and driver uniforms, at a reported cost of $100,000.

The previous logo contained the word Muni and the letters ‘SF’ in a ribbon. Landor removed the SF and compressed the letters so they would flow into one another. Parallel bands, rising, turning and returning, alluded to movement across San Francisco’s hills, while the continuous lines evoked transport routes and an interconnected system.

The tension between legibility and abstraction, in some ways both symbol and wordmark, the logo subverted the conventions of transport networks at the time, which often leaned into initials and directional arrows.

The logo was accompanied by what was named the ‘Sunset’ livery. Vehicles were white, with two bands of two contrasting oranges named ‘California Poppy’ and ‘Sunset Glow’. The bright colours vastly improved their visibility and recognition as these moved throughout the city. These were complimented by new brown driver uniforms.

The corporate identity began its roll out at the beginning of 1975, coinciding with the introduction of hundreds of new vehicles entering service, and ahead of the opening of the Muni Metro subway. Modernisation wasn’t just in the way Muni looked, but was tied to a significant period of modernisation of infrastructure.

Despite this, the response was initially muted, with The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen adding criticism, referring to the symbol as the ‘Muni Worm’. While intended as an insult, the nickname stuck and was embraced.

In 1996, Muni launched a competition to find a new symbol, inviting students at San Francisco’s Academy of Art College to submit proposals with the chance of winning $5,000.

The winning design featured a winged disk, but substantial public opposition prevented its introduction. The worm survived further uncertainty following the creation of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency in 1999.

Although its original Sunset livery was gradually replaced by silver and red, Landor’s logo remains in use across vehicles, signage, uniforms and now merchandise.

Thank you for subscribing to Logo Histories. If you enjoy reading this you may also enjoy these resources from the same team:

Brand Archive – Research tool for brand designers.
LogoArchive Website – Searchable modernist logo archive & research tool.
LogoArchive Shop – Vintage design books & LogoArchive Zines.
BP&O – Contemporary design editorial.

Spatial logos cover a subset of logos and logo design techniques that also include extrusion logos and logos that appear as impossible forms. These are flat graphic shapes that appear to occupy dimensional space.

This impression is often achieved by using isometric grids or perspective drawing, and the suggestion of light and shade through the balancing of positive and negative space.

Logos that suggest that they exist within 3d space tend to lend themselves well to industries such as construction, architecture, interior design and packaging design and manufacturing, as well as logistics, shipping, imports and exports, with the latter often represented by variations on stacked boxes.

For cultural institutions seeking to connect their identities to the physical world, and in particular, galleries, museums, opera houses and theatres housed in distinctive modern buildings, architecture offers a natural source of inspiration.

Distilling a building’s defining features into a simple graphic form can create a strong connection between an institution, its identity and its location. One such example is Javad Pouyan’s 1993 logo for the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

Other spatial logos seek to evoke other smaller less monumental material connectios such as Rodolfo Fernandez Alvarez’s 1989 logo for Dinelco Electronic Bank. Here, Alvarez created the initial ‘E’ from stacked lines with the intention of a alluding to piles of cash for an ATM service.

Want more examples of spatial logos? Search ‘Spatial’ on LogoArchive.

Thank you for subscribing to Logo Histories. If you enjoy reading this short you may also enjoy these resources from the same team:

Brand Archive – Research tool for brand designers.
LogoArchive Website – Searchable modernist logo archive & research tool.
LogoArchive Shop – Vintage design books & LogoArchive Zines.
BP&O – Contemporary design editorial.

Welcome to the Community Logos newsletter. Here, we feature the latest logos added to LogoArchive from today’s best designers.

To add your logos, and be featured in this newsletter and on LogoArchive Now, sign-up and start submitting here.

→ Join LogoArchive

Brand Archive – Research tool for brand designers.
LogoArchive Website – Searchable modernist logo archive & research tool.
LogoArchive Shop – Vintage design books & LogoArchive Zines.
BP&O – Contemporary design editorial.

This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover over 5000 of history’s greatest designs from the world’s finest designers. Updated every single day. Always find the logo inspiration you need for your next logo or branding project. Start here.

By the late 1960s the Olivetti logotype had undergone five distinct changes since its founding in 1908, with each lasting for around a decade. As Olivetti was originally a typewriter manufacturer, the design of the logotype was of ‘special concern’ with the belief that the typestyle not only reflect the spirit of a particular age but express the corporation’s contemporary concerns.

Want to see more of this brand? And thousands of assets from hundreds of other brands like Adidas, Pepsi and Coke? Join Brand Archive.

This began in 1923 with a logotype created by founder Camillo Olivetti. This was decorative, and very much in keeping with the art nouveau flourishes of the time. This was followed in 1934 by a typewriter inspired Universal Pica logotype by Xanti Schawinsky that better reflected the mechanical nature of the product. Schawinsky would later design a further logotype in 1947 that improved the immediacy and impact across advertising with bolder and more broadly spaced letters.

In 1960 G. Pintori made each letter bolder and tightened the spacing to improve the visual impact and usability of the logotype. This was in keeping with the spirit of the 1960’s, and seen as a heyday for Olivetti graphic design as it experimented with typographical techniques. This afforded individual designers under specific commissions a creative leeway, and gave Olivetti a continued relevance.

Despite Olivetti’s forward-looking approach to graphic design, the combined use of the logotype and symbol had become problematic. A lack of visual cohesion between spiral symbol and logotype had resulted in the symbol being used as decoration. Further, the spiral symbol was thought to not be bold enough to identify the corporation by itself and it was being copied by other companies.

By the late 1960s it was felt that the typestyle had become ‘overused and outdated’, and was too similar to existing typefaces to be registered as a trademark. As well as this, the logotype had suffered from continued incorrect usage in advertising, undermining its effectiveness. In 1967, The Corporate Image Department of Olivetti, headed by H. von Klier and C. Castelli, was tasked with resolving these issues and establishing a formalised corporate identity. Swiss-born graphic designer Walter Ballmer joined the design group.

At the early stage it was decided to abandon the spiral symbol and focus on designing a bold new trademark. Their group’s work began by composing the letters of Olivetti using readily available typefaces. The variety of options produced by different typefaces were then examined and further sketches were made, taking spacing and weighting take into consideration.

The final design, drawn by Walter Ballmer, saw each of the eight letters of ‘Olivetti' thickened to create a bolder appearance and emphasising a strong horizontal line. Curved elements were then used to add grace to the single mass formed by tightening the individual letters. The resulting logotype was seen as sharing common design language with the products Olivetti produced and effectively symbolised the company.

Once the logotype was settled on in 1971, the design group went to work on developing a design manual which would later be known as ‘The Red Book’. This was described by H. von Klier as a ‘working instrument’ rather than being an ‘authoritative treatise’.

The goal of the Red Book was to unify the Olivetti graphic image on a ‘total scale’ acting as a helmsman. It was developed on the basis of an attitude of ‘glorifying humanity’ and ‘affording the potential of full expression to the talents of designers and artists’ that Olivetti worked with without defining strict rules for each design element. In this way, it was quite different to the systematisation of the America corporate guidelines of the time. However, it did standardise much of Olivetti’s formal corporate communications where appropriate, applying economies of scale to the fabrication of signage and the printing of stationery and forms.

In establishing both the fundamental elements of the design, bearing in mind the spirit of the age, as well as developing a high quality and flexible system for creating various applications, the identity system was not merely a set of rules but a highly original work in and of itself. Although the system was diminished over time the logotype managed to exceed the age of previous iterations, being used over four decades and remaining in use today.

Thank you for subscribing to Logo Histories. If you enjoy reading this short you may also enjoy these resources from the same team:

Brand Archive – Research tool for brand designers.
LogoArchive Website – Searchable modernist logo archive & research tool.
LogoArchive Shop – Vintage design books & LogoArchive Zines.
BP&O – Contemporary design editorial.

This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover over 5000 of history’s greatest designs from the world’s finest designers. Updated every single day. Always find the logo inspiration you need for your next logo or branding project. Start here.

Read more

A uniqueness of form and a duality of meaning is derived from the natural synergy and intersection of two or more ideas.

Compounding logos find a way to balance two things in one form. For example, Peter Dabinett expresses notions of ‘oversight’ and ‘fairness’ for the Office of Consumer Affairs b…

Read more

Welcome to the second Community Logos newsletter where we feature the latest logos added to LogoArchive from today’s best designers. To add your logos, and be featured in this newsletter and on LogoArchive Now, sign-up and start submitting here.

→ Join LogoArchive

Read more

The 1978 Commonwealth Games took place in the Canadian city of Edmonton from August 3 to 12, 1978. This would be the first time the event was officially named the ‘Commonwealth Games’ rather than the British Commonwealth Games.

As with Games before, a symbol was sought out, with Canadian designer Stuart Ash delivering the final design.

Ash’s concept for t…

Read more

This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover over 5000 of history’s greatest designs from the world’s finest designers. Updated every single day. Always find the logo inspiration you need for your next logo or branding project. Start here.

Read more

Logos should identify, be distinctive and function well in all the relevant contexts. There are many ways of arriving at a logo that achieves these. Some will say a logo doesn’t need to reflect the function, practices or situation of a brand or business, but …

Read more

Check out the latest logos added to LogoArchive from today’s best designers. To add your logos, and be featured in this newsletter and on LogoArchive Now, sign-up and start submitting here.

→ Join LogoArchive

Read more

Merck is one of the oldest pharmaceutical and chemical companies in the world, with activities spread across hundreds of companies and throughout many countries.

Due to decades of expansion and diversification, mergers and acquisitions, the Merck visual identity had become fragmented and inconsistent.

To address this fragmentation, and unify the public p…

Read more

The Greeley-Weld County Airport opened in June 1944 and saw significant expansion in the 1960s with a new airport terminal and administration building added in 1964. Expansion continued and growth plans were laid out in the 1970s.

Throughout this period, the airport added more hangars and initiated various improvement projects, all the way into the 1980s.

Read more

Illusory contours, also known as subjective contours, can be described as visual illusions that evoke the perception of an edge. This can be used to encourage the viewer’s mind to complete images that in reality are only partially formed or loosely inferred.

Logos that use this technique could be …

Read more

Check out the latest logos added to LogoArchive from today’s best designers. To add your logos, and be featured in this newsletter and on LogoArchive Now, sign-up and start submitting here.

→ Join LogoArchive

Read more

This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover over 5000 of history’s greatest designs from the world’s finest designers. Updated every single day. Always find the logo inspiration you need for your next logo or branding project. Start here.

Read more

The British National Export Council was established in 1964 as a partnership between industry and Government to promote and grow British exports to the world.

As an effort to unify the various organisational bodies and businesses that made up the council, it required an authoritative identity and logo.

With this authority in mind, Negus & Sharland develop…

Read more

Proximity can be used to describe the nearness and relationship of objects in space. In the context of logo design, this can be extended to the closeness and relationship between shapes, and specifically, of volumes. This relationship between volumes differentiates this technique from others su…

Read more

In this newsletter, we feature the latest logos added to LogoArchive from today’s best designers. To add your logos, and be featured in this newsletter and on LogoArchive Now, sign-up and start submitting here.

→ Join LogoArchive

Read more

This post is supported by LogoArchive – The home of historical logos. Discover over 5000 of history’s greatest designs from the world’s finest designers. Updated every single day. Always find the logo inspiration you need for your next logo or branding project. Start here.

Read more