ISO50

Graham Smith’s brilliant Unevolved Brands is “A progressive study on brand & logo simplification“. It’s also a lot of fun; we sat here for quite a while going through each logo and trying to guess the brand it represented. They run the gamut from completely obvious to frustratingly cryptic and all the while Smith strings you along with vague hints as to the logo’s true identity. The fact that I recognized any of them is sort of a sad testament to the pervasiveness of the modern global brand. They’ve drilled these things into our heads to the point where all we need are a couple colors and basic shapes.

Unless some sort of Mad Max / Waterworld situation goes down and people start just wearing leather suits and fish skin canteen holsters, brands aren’t going anywhere. But it would be nice to see more companies start shifting to simpler, text-free versions like these (Nike and Apple are good examples of brands who have already gone pretty far in this direction). A lot of Smith’s simplifications are really nice to look at actually.

Be honest, did you get most of them? I feel like UK people have an advantage, a few those I’ve never even heard of.

Unevolved Brands via Quipsologies