What’s the first logo or brand you remember seeing? It seems a simple question to ask anyone, but as the years roll on and advertising and branding becomes more sophisticated and employs new technologies and platforms to help it penetrate your ears, eyes, and nasal passages*, it becomes a harder question to answer.
*(yes, that’s right, what do you think perfume is? It’s merely an olfactory brand extender, a logo you can smell – sorry to break the illusion and destroy the fantasy, and this even goes for the smell of that coffee you just bought from that chain)
Today’s young people are assaulted like never before, at every stage during their development, with beautifully constructed, highly visual and very powerful brands. From the TV shows with visual branding and audio indents, toy manufacturers like Fisher Price (a personal favourite logo)
and food companies like McDonalds and everyone in-between, the race to gain associations and build the bond with the consumer is relentless. Companies and advertisers know that ‘if you get’m young, you’ve got a good chance of keeping them for life’.
Check out this amazing short film called Logorama by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy + Ludovic Houplain for a huge dose of logos. You get a great sense of the sheer amount of mainstream logos that are part of the everyday landscape.
Logorama from Marc Altshuler – Human Music on Vimeo.
So perhaps this is going to be a hard question for the current generation to answer but for slightly older consumers, particularly children that grew up in a pre-digital era, it might be a little easier to remember.
Why am I asking this? It’s because I DO remember the first logo and brand I saw. I’m not sure of my age, but maybe around 2 or 3 years old, and I’ve loved the logo ever since (get’m while they’re young) for it’s simplicity and the fact it reminds me of being a child in the north of England.
So, what’s the first logo or brand you remember seeing? My first logo was the Blue Star used by Newcastle Brown Ale.
I remember seeing it glowing, hanging off the side of a wall on a drab street (It was a pub sign but none of this registered – I saw it as a huge blue star and to young eyes that’s enough) and staring at it. Even now when I see it on bottles or football shirts it reminds me of the first time I saw it. Good logos are powerful things.
The Blue Star in place at the centre of the Newcastle Brown Ale bear bottle label.
And for the record, ‘they’ got me young and kept me for life. Cheers.
Remember your first logo? Let us know…