Color in Advertising
Starbucks & Negative Space
The Starbucks logo is one I’m incredibly familiar with. I worked there for six months this year, not to mention the store is everywhere in big cities. What I’ve never noticed is how the logo uses negative and positive space to create the iconic image of the siren. The contrast of this green and white really pops against their white cups that are used for hot drinks. However, it’s a lot harder to spot when placed on a clear cup where only the white silhouette is visible. I think that the deep green benefits the brand, especially because Starbucks really focuses on ethically sourced and fresh coffee. However, now that the brand has switched to a more modern design and doesn’t always use the green logo, it makes their drinks much harder to spot in public compared to a Dunkin cup.
I find the Animal Planet logo really interesting in how it uses alignment. The ‘A’ stretches past the rest of the letters in ‘animal,’ and the bottom of it lines up with ‘planet,’ which is really interesting. It can be a little confusing at first, as I feel like my eyes are instantly drawn downwards by the letter’s placement. The ‘M’ in the words is turned onto its side, scrunching up the other letters on either side of it. I don’t really know why this choice was made, but it makes the logo very dynamic so I don’t find it offputting. The color green once again fits this brand, because green is a color typically associated with nature and Animal Planet is obviously aligned with this ideal.
Animal Planet & Alignment
Recycling Logo & Line
One of the most obvious logos that uses green is the universal recycling logo. This logo is public domain and not privately owned, so it’s easy to find everywhere from restaurants to websites. The color green obviously correlates to nature and the environment, since the act of recycling is all about protecting those elements. The lines are curved and point to each other in a never ending loop that forms a triangle. Each line represents a step in the recycling process (reduce, reuse, recycle), and the fact that the lines point towards each other shows how important each step is in saving the environment. I think that out of all the previous examples, this one is the most effective and iconic, not only at using the color green but also at incorporating the elements we’ve talked about in class.
Doublemint Gum & Line
The Doublemint logo utilizes lines in an interesting way. The logo is an actual line, pointing both left and right. I think the simplicity of the logo is nice, even though I’m a little confused as to why the logo is a line pointing both ways. The word Doublemint might have something to do with it. In my opinion, the fact the logo contains nothing at least symbolizing that it’s a gum brand kind of takes away from the whole point of advertising. The color green might give us a bit of a clue (since we denote green to mean something natural or fresh), but I would make the color a little brighter if I wanted to accurately portray this. If it wasn’t for the fact that my mom exclusively chews Doublemint gum, I’d have no idea what this logo was for when I looked it up on Google.
Sprite & Shape
The shape surrounding the word Sprite for the older logos utilized somewhat organic shapes. The word is put into this bubble like 2D shape. The reason I say it’s somewhat organic is because the shape has both sharp points that may not occur in nature along with curves. The much older logos also had a yellow and green fruit to symbolize the lemon lime flavor of the soda. However, this and the organic bubble shape have disappeared in more recent logo changes. I think these kind of take away from the brand and make the logo seem very generic. Even though the brand is recognizable just by name, I think having something dynamic about the logo would make it more interesting to look at.