James I. Bowie

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the United States, and the associated pink ribbons are everywhere. Over the last several decades, such “cause ribbons” designed to raise awareness of various issues have become extremely common visual symbols. The graph below shows the recent sharp increase in the use of ribbons in US logos.

“Ribbon” logos as a percentage of all new US logos

The popularity of the ribbon symbol took off in the United States in 1979, when yellow ribbons were tied around trees in support of the American embassy personnel held hostage in Iran. This practice was inspired by the song “Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree,” which had been a hit for Tony Orlando and Dawn in 1973. The song was based on an American folk tale of a man returning to his hometown after serving a prison sentence. He had written a letter to his old girlfriend asking her to tie a yellow ribbon around an oak tree if she still loved him; as his bus pulls up he sees “a hundred yellow ribbons ’round the old oak tree.”

MADD door handle ribbon, Red Ribbon Drug-Free Youth mark, Arthur Ashe looped ribbon with tennis ball logo

The use of cause ribbons began to spread in the 1980s and 1990s, as yellow ribbons took on a meaning of “supporting the troops” and red ribbons were used in the anti-AIDS movement. In 1989, a cause ribbon first appeared in a registered US trademark, a symbol of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) depicting a red ribbon tied around a car door handle. In 1990, the National Federation of Parents for Drug Free Youth used a red ribbon logo, and in 1993, the now-familiar looped ribbon first appeared in another red ribbon mark used by Arthur Ashe’s organization in its fight against AIDS.

While ribbons had traditionally been used in logos to depict gifts (as in Paul Rand’s original UPS logo), awards (Pabst Blue Ribbon), or as banners for text, cause ribbons quickly assumed a prominent place in logos. By 2011, 21 percent of logos containing a ribbon of any sort featured a cause ribbon.

The looped ribbon symbol ultimately became so popular that the United States Patent and Trademark Office came to consider it a “universal symbol,” like the Christian cross or the peace symbol, meaning that it cannot be registered as a trademark without being graphically modified in a distinctive way.

Color is obviously an important aspect of cause ribbons, as different colors signify various causes. The graph above shows that as cause ribbons have proliferated, the variety of colors used in ribbon logos has exploded. While 95 percent of ribbon logos featuring colors between 1980 and 1999 used either red or blue, since 2000 other colors have seen dramatic increases in use. Most notable among these is pink, which has become nearly as popular as red and blue in ribbon logos, a testament to the success of the breast cancer awareness movement.

James I. Bowie

Thursday’s unveiling of Microsoft’s new logo was the biggest logo design news of the year to date. Let’s take a look at the new mark in terms of how it relates to trends in United States Patent and Trademark Office data on logo design.

Perhaps most notable is Microsoft’s switch from a logotype (or wordmark) alone to a logotype/symbol combination.

Percentage of new logos featuring logotypes and logotype/symbol combinations

The graph above shows that among both logos in general and computer-related logos in specific, logotype/symbol combinations are becoming more popular and logotypes alone are becoming less popular (and as Emblemetric’s Logotype vs. Symbol analysis reported, logotype/symbol combinations are currently trendy, while logotypes alone are not). And although combination marks are slightly less common among computer-related logos than among logos as a whole, Microsoft’s decision to change to a logotype/symbol combination is consistent with trends both in its industry and in general.

Looking at the symbol itself, it is quite simply a square element made up of smaller multicolored squares. The graph below shows the prevalence of both squares in general and groups of three or more squares as design elements in new logos over the last three decades. Data for computer-related industries is again contrasted with data for industries as a whole.

Percentage of new logos featuring “squares” and “3 or more squares” as design elements

It is apparent that squares have long been a logo design favorite for computer-related businesses. And over the last ten years, just 6.08 percent of all logos featured squares of some sort, compared to 9.62 percent of computer logos. Logos featuring three or more squares accounted for 1.05 percent of all logos, while among computer logos, the figure was double: 2.10 percent. Microsoft is certainly sticking close to industry conventions with its use of squares in its new logo.

Percentage of dying logos featuring “squares” and “3 or more squares” as design elements

The graph above shows that logos with squares and 3 or more squares are not dying out (i.e., being abandoned or canceled, or expiring) at alarming rates, so Microsoft is not hitching its wagon to some fading trend with this new logo.

 Percentage of new logos featuring red, green, blue, and yellow

Microsoft’s use of the combination of red, green, blue, and yellow in its new symbol is not typical of computer-related logos, or logos in general, for that matter. The graph above shows that the percentage of new logos featuring this combination has never approached one-half of one-percent since 1980.

But Microsoft has long associated itself with this color combination, dating back to the very first red/green/blue/yellow computer-related logo, the original Windows flag, filed for trademark registration this week in 1991. Indeed, 20.3 percent of all such logo registrations are Microsoft’s. The company’s challenge now is to “own” this combination, given that it is also used by Google and eBay.

In all, the new Microsoft logo strikes a nice balance between bringing the company’s visual image more in line with contemporary design trends and retaining distinctive elements of the Microsoft graphic identity.

James I. Bowie

In the first ten months of 2011, there were 44,227 logos filed for trademark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Among them:

• The two most common design elements were “shaded circles” (found in 4.3 percent of the logos) and “shaded rectangles” (found in 3.8 percent of the logos); see Logos Taking Shape
• The most common color used was red (of logos featuring colors, 23.84 percent contained red and 23.69 percent contained blue); see The Color of Logos
• The most common USPTO industry classification was advertising/business management/administration (16.2 percent of the logos fell into this category)
• Logotype/symbol combinations accounted for 87.1 percent of the logos, while logos that only contained symbols made up the other 12.9 percent (logotypes alone are not included in this analysis); see Logotype vs. Symbol
• The state producing the most logos was California, with 14.9 percent of the total; see Logo Geography

The EMAX VPMA logo, above, a trademark of Encore Legal Solutions of Los Angeles, represents a web-based legal support service system. It may not be 2011’s most beautiful, best-designed, or most effective logo, but it fits the criteria above perfectly and is therefore the most typical, making it Emblemetric’s Logo of the Year.

“Leaf” logos filed for trademark registration in 2011

James I. Bowie

One of the most prominent trends in logo design in recent years has been the proliferation of leaves as design elements.  As companies have attempted to adopt images that reflect our society’s increasing concern for the environment, the leaf has become visual shorthand for eco-friendliness.

Percentage of new logos containing leaves

The graph above shows the sudden jump in leafy logos over the past decade (the analyses here are concerned only with logos containing generic leaf images; logos featuring specific leaves such as maple, oak, and holly are not included). By 2009, the percentage of logos with leaves reached 3.87 percent, before dropping off slightly in 2010 and 2011. It may be that we have seen this trend peak.

 Leaf logos by industry

Of course, the leaf logo trend has not taken hold equally across all industries. The graph above shows that logos in industries such as agriculture, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals are much more likely to feature leaves: for example, in 2008, almost 16 percent of all new agricultural logos contained leaves. But even those industries such as insurance and advertising that would seem to have little use for natural or “green” images have seen marked increases in leafy logos.

Percentage of “dying” logos containing leaves

The flipside of the leaf’s popularity as a design element is that more and more “dying” trademarks (those that are abandoned, canceled, or expired) contain leaves. The graph above shows this increase. By 2011, 3.44 percent of dying logos contained leaves, nearly matching the percentage of new 2011 logos with leaves (3.68%). It appears that the leaf is transitioning from logo design trend to logo design cliché.

James I. Bowie

A common question in branding and identity design concerns the relative effectiveness of logotypes (stylized typographic expressions of a company or brand name) and symbols (graphic icons that represent a company or brand).

Those from a marketing background often pooh-pooh graphic symbols and recommend the use of logotypes, which promote a name above all else. Jack Trout, writing for Forbes in 2007, declared:

“Logos have been with us for thousands of years…The Roman legions had them. In the middle ages, every two-bit duke with a handful of knights had one plastered on their shields. There were crests or coats of arms everywhere. But none ever amounted to anything. What lived on were the names of the people involved or the places the big battles were fought. What does that tell you? It’s not about the symbol. It’s about the name connected to the symbol.”

Designers, not surprisingly, have more appreciation for the power of symbols relative to logotypes. In a 1999 Communication Arts article, Mark Fox discussed Nike’s decision to detach its Swoosh symbol from its logotype:

“After the connection between a company and logo…is sufficiently understood by the public, the power of the logo can, on occasion, be increased by dropping the company name. Beyond making the symbol translingual, the lack of text can allow the logo to possess a certain ineffable quality that suggests far more than it could before. The ancient Hebrews realized this and, as a result, had a proscription against writing the name of God. That which is named is always less powerful than that which is unnamed.”

Analysis of United States Patent and Trademark Office data can shed some light on the relative use and success of symbols and logotypes.

Relative Use of Graphic Trademark Types

The graph above shows that, over the last five decades, the most common type of graphic trademark filed for registration in the US has moved from the logotype alone to the combination of logotype and symbol. The prevalence of the unaccompanied symbol has risen slightly, but it remains the least common of the three options (of course, many companies will register multiple versions of their trademarks, featuring logotype, symbol, or both).

“Trendiness” of Graphic Trademark Types

By factoring in the types of trademarks that are “dying” (being abandoned or canceled, or expiring) in a given year, we can get a sense for how “trendy” each of these types has been.

The above graph’s vertical axis represents a ratio of the share of graphic trademark type in new logos in a given year to the share of graphic trademark type in dying logos from that year. So if symbols account for 20 percent of new trademarks in a year and 20 percent of dying trademarks in that year, their ratio is 1, meaning that they are not at all trendy in a positive or negative way. However, if logotypes made up 80 percent of new trademarks and just 40 percent of dying trademarks, their ratio would be 2, meaning that they would be very “hot” for that year. Likewise, if combinations of logotypes and symbols were used just 20 percent of the time in new trademarks and 60 percent of the time in dying trademarks, their ratio would be 0.33, making them quite “cold.”

We can see that for much of the past two decades, symbols were “hot” while logotypes were “cold.” Only in the past few years has the logotype/symbol combination become hotter than symbols alone, while logotypes alone continue to seem to be dying out at a faster rate than they are being created.

Graphic Trademark Type by Industry

Looking at selected industries, we can see that symbols alone are used most often in pharmaceutical and alcohol trademarks, and least often in advertising and hospitality. Logotypes alone are used most in chemical and pharmaceutical marks, and least often in hospitality and medical marks. Combinations of logotypes and symbols are used most often in the hospitality and medical industries, and least often in chemical and pharmaceutical trademarks.

Another way to assess the relative success of the different types of graphic trademarks is to look at how long they survive in use, from the time they are filed for registration until they are abandoned, canceled, or expired.

Lifespan, in years, of graphic trademark types

The graph above shows that, among trademarks that have died, those using logotypes alone had the longest average lifespan (11.7 years, followed by symbols alone (8.07 years) and the logotype/symbol combination (7.08 years). While a trademark’s survival over time does not necessarily mean that it is an effective mark, such longevity should be seen as a positive thing in general.