Psychology of symbols

The effective design and use of a logo employs the understanding of human behavior. Whether cultural, or internal, people recognize and react to color, shapes, lines, fonts and other symbolic forms with emotions tied to their experiences.

Colors have a broad range of meaning according to different nations and cultures. A color could mean one thing in a particular setting, and something completely different in another.

People's minds have been trained to recognize the motion of a line. Horizontal lines often communicate a leveled security. Vertical lines convey dignity, and diagonal lines are full of energy, suggesting either rising or falling, or movement in one direction or another.

-  EXAMPLES - 

Corporations, businesses and products

Due to the design, the color, the shape, and eventually additional elements of the logotype, each one can easily be differentiated from other logotypes. For example, a box of Kellogg's cereals will be easily recognized in a supermarket's shelf from a certain distance, due to its unique typography and distinctive red coloring. The same will be true when one is at the airport looking for the booth of the Hertz Rent-A-Car company.

Some well-known logos include Apple Inc.'s apple with a bite taken out, which started out as a rainbow of color, and has been reduced to a single color without any loss of recognition. Coca-Cola's script is known worldwide, but is best associated with the color red; its main competitor, Pepsi has taken the color blue, although they have abandoned their script logo. IBM, also known as "Big Blue" has simplified their logo over the years, and their name. What started as International Business Machines is now just "IBM" and the color blue has been a signature in their unifying campaign as they have moved to become an IT services company.