The Press Stories
There is a hidden arrow in the FedEx logo. (If you have never noticed before, take a look and prepare to be impressed.)
It was, in fact, an accident. “The furthest thing from our minds was the idea of an arrow,” said Lindon Leader, who designed the logo in 1994, in an email interview. “But in an internal criticism halfway through the logo scan, I was intrigued by a design that had widely spaced letters.”
“After a few days, I realized that if a genuine arrow could be inserted into the letter shapes, it could subtly suggest going from point A to point B reliably, with speed and precision,” Leader said.
Still can’t see the arrow? Swipe right to reveal it.
Credits: FedEx. FedEx
The power of the arrow, Leader thinks, is simply that it’s a hidden bonus, and not seeing doesn’t reduce the impact of the logo itself. But how many people actually see it without knowing where it is?
“The prevailing notion is, I have heard, that perhaps fewer than one in five people find the hidden arrow unaided. But I can’t say how many people have told me how much fun it is to ask others if they can spot something in the logo,” said the leader.
More than an arrow
The same company that designed the FedEx logo created another that makes brilliant use of negative space, the NorthWest Airlines logo used from 1989 to 2003 (Northwest merged with Delta in 2008). The circle and arrow create a compass that points correctly to the northwest. But the arrow, along with the “N”, also creates a “W” that has part of his left leg removed.
Sometimes the hidden element blends so well into a logo design that it can only be seen if it is pointed, like the hidden bear in the Toblerone logo.
Do you see the bear inside the mountain? Credit: Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images North America / Getty Images for NYCWFF
But is this an effective logo design strategy? “On one hand, yes, because these logos seek to identify a brand product or service very cheaply and immediately using humor to invoke a positive response,” said McNeil. But today, he said, there is a trend toward more direct and more direct design, as evidenced by the logos of many major corporations like Facebook and Google.
McNeil’s favorite logo is the design by Gianni Bortolotti for a defunct Italian company called ED – Elettro Domestici (Italian “appliances”). Simply by using the letters “ED” and negative space, it elegantly forms the shape of an electrical plug.
“It’s a constraint model with no superfluous elements,” said McNeil.
The ED logo works like an electrical outlet. Credit: from logolog.co
