20 Famous Logos that was Created by Combining Simple Shapes
We all know that a good logo design is highly important in establishing a successful brand. It should be able to create a powerful impact on the viewers and successfully exude the nature and attitude of the business. Thus, most of us have the misunderstanding that logos should be very complicated to indicate special meaning. On the contrary, many famous logos prove the principle that the simpler the company’s logo is the more recognizable it becomes; the more complex a logo is, however, the less likely it will be that people will remember it.
And of course, besides the vital simplicity it must be unique, with ingeniously a hidden message that distinctively describes the company’s branding. As branding becomes a very important aspect in securing the companies success right from the start whether its through brochure printing or huge television campaigns, it has to be memorable.
As to those famous simple logos, shapes are the basic elements. Each shape you incorporate in your logo design can help in the way your logo as well as your company is perceived. For instance, the circle means eternity, completeness, freedom or protection and the square makes people think of home and stability as well as fairness. The triangle, on the other hand, conveys conflict and hierarchy. So, we can combine basic shapes to create a logo.
Here is my collections of 20 famous unique logos that are very easy to make by combining simple shapes.
A famous logo that almost everyone knows about belongs to Pepsi Cola. It inherits the shape of a bottle cap that you can find on the drinks. You can create this logo all by yourself without drawing lines and circles. Just drag the curve element
in a white color onto the middle of two semicircles with red and blue respectively to obtain the Pepsi logo easily.
Although we can see that the SANYO logo is letter based, it is also composed of shapes in the “N” letter form. Hence, you can design this letter by combining a rectangle shape with ten parallel linear rectangles.
This masterpiece is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., the designer beautifully integrates four interlocked copies of the keyword “sun”, skillfully combining the adjacent “U” and “N” letters to the alphabet “S”. How brilliant! But it’s very easy to make because this logo is composed by eight of these images”
”, which is made of two rectangle shapes and a semi-circle.
The IBM logo is recognized worldwide due to its easy going image. The alphabets in IBM logo have horizontal stripes which furthermore underline the attributes of IBM industry. To create the logo, you need first input “IBM”, and then add seven white stripes on the text objects. I‘ve seen an interesting post titled: Reproduce the Logo Design Steps for the Famous Brand – IBM, you may follow the link to see how to create this logo without using Photoshop.
Chanel is famous for its line of perfumes, clothing and fashion accessories. The Chanel logo is an overlapping double ‘C’ – one facing forward and the other backward. So, as to this logo, you can overlap two loops created by two circles, and then add two white triangles on both sides to make the loop like letter C.
This logo belongs to JPMorgan Chase Bank, a leading global financial services firm with operations in more than 60 countries. Chase logo indicates its main feature of security and fairness. This shape based logo includes four right-angle trapezoids formed by a square and a right-angled triangle.
Ubuntu Linux logo is a perfect example of experiment with extracting and combining the clones of one shape with the right blend of colors. The loop shape is made of two circles and three rectangles.
HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network. The logo of HBO is composed with a circle inside the ‘O’, simple as it is, still definitely grabs our attention. You can design this with two black circles and a white one.
Alzheimer’s Australia is a federation of State and Territory member associations. Its logo is very impressive and simple, created by six circles and two of them are white.
This is the logo of Octane Academy founded by Ford. The logo looks like difficult to design, but actually, you can make it with ease. Create a capital letter “A” in white and align it in the center of a bigger red triangle. Group them and overlap them to a well-made loop shaped image in a right way.
This logo comes from an IT services company called Synapse Interactive. The logo is combined with four overlapping circles. It’s so simple that everyone can make it.
12. The logo of Stay Positive – Hold Steady’s 2008 Vagrant release
This logo is clean and creative. It is created by two black loops and a white square with a black cross in the middle.
CargoLine Logistics Network is a high-performance transport and logistics co-operation with partners in Germany and Europe. Its logo is quite recognizable in this particular market. The combined “C” and “L” in the logo are easy to spot and look like a fish or a duck. It is formed by three rectangle shapes and two circles.
This is the logo of a design studio called Pia Isaksen Design. Based on the initials P.I.D., the entire logo symbolizes visual communication. It is made of two black circles together with two triangles and an “I” formed by two semicircles and a rectangle.
USA Network is an American cable television channel launched in 1971. The logo is text-based in two colors, black and white. We can design this logo by shapes, make letter A composed by two circles and a rectangle, and form the peculiar “s” image by adding a white S on a black circle, also achieve the letter U by combing semicircles and rectangles.
Northwest Airlines, Inc. was a major United States airline founded in 1926 .The logo reflected a clever way of splitting the alphabets N and W along with a location pointed to by the red triangle in the upper left corner. We could make this image by putting a white rectangle shape on the left side of the letter W to create it looks like a letter N.
Texaco logo is composed by a red T shaped image and a white five pointed star in the center of a red circular shape.
Oxfam is an international confederation working to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. The Oxfam logo is composed of three semi loops in a blue circle.
This logo is very simple and clear in reference to the brand name. The drawing of a zip in place of an “I” shows very obvious display of the company’s name, and the raw use of black and white adds to the seriousness of the brand. The shape in the middle of the logo can be created by several white small rectangles on two longer rectangles.
Provides a range of products for digital media creation and editing, multimedia authoring, and web development, Adobe is almost known to all. You can also make this shaped-based logo by a red parallelogram, a white triangle and a red square.
Now, do you believe that most of the celebrated, recognized or eye-pleasing logos are the simple ones? It is no doubt that simplicity is the key to a memorable logo. So, if you are ready to experience the creation of these famous logos in the way I introduced above, or design your own shape-based logos in a very simple way, just download Photoshop or other logo maker tools like logo maker, and start your magic design project at ease.
