The FedEx logo is one of the most popular and recognized logos in today's society. It was designed by graphic designer, Lindon Leader in 1994 who, at the time, was a Senior Director at Landon Associates in San Francisco. Leader's ultimate goals when designing anything are to accomplish designs that portray simplicity and clarity, which he did quite successfully when he created the now infamous FedEx logo. When Leader was initially given the task to redesign the FedEx logo, which was formerly named Federal Express, he polled consumers about their knowledge about the company. In the old Federal Express logo, which was originally purple and orange, many customers believed the colors were instead blue and red. Leader also discovered the consumers' popular abbreviation of the brand, "FedEx," in which they interestingly used as a verb. One major concern of Leader's research was that most customers were unaware of FedEx's nationwide and global services/capabilities. Many consumers believed that FedEx only offered overnight shipping and was limited to the United States. With his research, Leader's goal to FedEx's logo redesign was to communicate its array of services and make the FedEx brand a household name.
FedEx's CEO, Fred Smith, gave Leader free reign in the redesign of the logo, but strongly encouraged that each design concept was justifiable and that the visual factor of the logo was clear and could be seen a large distance away. Leader's design process consisted of three teams and about 200 design concepts that ranged from tweaking old ideas to ones that were both innovative and revolutionary. Leader and his team respected the FedEx brand and sought to extract value when making changes to the logo's design. Leader believed it was best to stay with the company's classic color choice of purple and orange since it was recognizable, but played with the colors so that they were less red and less blue. He also brainstormed with typefaces (mainly Univers 67 and Futura Bold) and played around with the layout of the letters, which is when he discovered that the space between the capital E and lowercase x created an arrow. Leader believed that the surprise element of the arrow was a perfect and subtle surprise that represented forward direction, speed, and precision of FedEx services.
The history and design impact of the well-known FedEx logo is an example of how something that is seemingly so simple actually took a great amount of research and brainstorming. The extreme success of the logo is more than likely due to a grueling design process to create a design that was effective yet remained extraordinarily effortless. The violet and orange colors, although slightly muted, against a white background creates a memorable contrast; orange, being close to yellow on the color wheel, allows it to slightly pop/complement the violet especially when in close proximity to one another. The choice to use a bold sans-serif typeface also adds to the success of the design. The boldness of the letters, which makes up for the minor lack of intensity in the colors, demands the attention of viewers. The kearning (or lack there of) of the letters also creates a sense of agility, which may be a representation of the company’s promise of speedy services. The element of surprise in the negative space in between the “E” and the “x” which forms an arrow is also a playful aspect of the design that symbolizes a business that is quick, efficient, and always moving forward.
Source:
May, Matthew. "The Story
Behind the Famous FedEx Logo." Fast
Company. Fast Company, Mansuetto Ventures, LCC, 2014. Web. 29 Oct 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment