Example #1I chose three logos representative of companies with which I have some existing relationship. All of these organizations have been immensely important to some aspect of my development, and they stand out from other personally important groups because of the strong impression their branding has made on me. These logos have all stood the test, so that I think of them immediately when I think of the organization.

Grasshopper’s Distribution is a for-profit, farmer-owned, farm-to-table cooperative distribution center with a non-profit educational component. My best friend works here, and I volunteered for years, as well as involved my family farmer in the cooperative. I find their logo to be wonderfully illustrative of their concept. Even without the tag line, even if you can’t read the language, if you have any familiarity with the term farm-to-fork, you understand that Grasshoppers’ is a business offering some related product or service. The color combination suggests nature, and serves as a strong branding package, allowing many reiterations of the basic brand with different combinations of these colors. The type is thin, not perfectly readable, but successful in drawing your eye in to explore what the visuals are really trying to communicate. The tag line text doesn’t feel completely necessary in this size, but is more useful when the logo is presented in really small format. I understand its usefulness in that context, but it also distracts me because it doesn’t seem integrated into the rest of the logo.

Stax was once a very profitable soul music label based in Memphis, TN, and responsible for distributing the bulk of the last centuries’ great Southern soul groups (Motown, as you’ll remember, was more relevant to the Great Migration and based in Detroit). After filing bankruptcy decades ago, Stax was then re-imagined as a non-profit museum, foundation, and urban music education facility.

Their logo has survived and served both iterations. The image here is perfectly communicative. The snapping finger suggests music, but it also suggests movement. If you’ve listened to Wilson Picket or the Staple Singers, you’ve likely snapped or hand clapped your way through the album; thus they really hit the nail on the head by helping the viewer to imagine not only the products and services they offer, but how those products and services will make the consumer feel. On one occasion, I bought a box set that had the logo as a hologram that snapped its own fingers, brilliant!

The gritty quality of the image is also appropriate, because it suggest a number of things this organization represents:

The hand, like the label, isn’t race specific. It suggests race as does the music it represents, but Stax existed as a label founded by white men and then owned by black men, representing both black and white artists (their house band, Booker T & the MG’s was famously integrated), and listened to by black and white alike.

The gritty quality of the hand suggests the urban aspect of Stax records. The studio is located in a struggling part of an always gritty river town. The streets are dirty, the river is un-swim-able, and the area where the museum lies is considered by white locals to be a dangerous and urban part of town too near the interstate. The city is very Southern, and still fairly segregated, I’ve never had any problem around there. Very rural populations from Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee often move to Memphis, and find themselves struggling to find their place in its urban context. This rural/urban dynamic is part of the history of Stax records, and I love that their logo suggests it.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this logo, but I love all that the image suggests about the company and its products. A truly iconic logo.

While this logo doesn’t personally excite me to the same extent, I feel that they’ve done a really outstanding job communicating their mission. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth is a non-profit citizen led organization committed to non-violent social and political action on the grassroots level. I think the most successful aspect of this logo is its ability to communicate what the organization is without a tag line. Obviously, the organization is committed to the state of Kentucky, and its citizens, The variety of shapes and colors also suggests that they seek to involve all Kentuckians, and the raised arm in the lower left hand corner implies a commitment to activism. The logo, regardless of what size it is printed, always communicates the same ideas, and the colors of the image coupled with those in the type offer a cohesive brand. The downside is that this logo may lose significant meaning when printed in black and white.

Example #2