Symbolism in Logos
During the 20th century, urban environments got taken over by corporate logos. Studies have reported that an average person is exposed to about a hundreds of logos a day.
Few people however ponder on the symbolic meaning of these marketing tools and their occult origins.
Think about where you encounter logos on an average day: they are on household items, on cars, on clothes, in tv ads, on billboards, on insignia, and all over sporting events.
Logos are one of the results of extensive studies (funded by the Rockefeller's "Chicago School") in cognitive sciences, psychology and biology.
Those studies constitute the core of "marketing", a heavily funded field which keeps its findings totally secret from the general public. Why are the findings secret?
The show begins with discussing the symbolism of two major corporations, Starbucks and Apple. What is really being said in logos?
This documentary was filmed in Bath and Bristol, England featuring special guests such as Michael Tsarion, Neil Hague, Ralph Ellis, Leo Rutherford, Neil Kramer, Dan Tatman and Peter Taylor. The crew also interviews a priest, university students, teachers and of course a couple random pub interviews.
@Geoffrey Grekin has the clearest observation of the docu, thank you. As for those indoctrinated individuals who have been brainwashed into dismissing anything that is one-sided. Many things which you lavish praise upon as being a balanced viewpoint, isn't at all. It is a pretense to fool those who have such indoctrination. Often the propagandist brings up an opposing viewpoint then readily dismisses it with very limited or no information, to make it seem like the opposition has been covered and dispensed with legitimately, when it hasn't at all. When a commenter does so it can be for the same reason ...or because they don't have all day to cover and explain every last side and detail. Same for the person making a documentary.
Maybe I missed it but was surprised not to see more on the "XX" logo. Such as in Exxon and all the others companies with a double XX in it. I once heard a bit about how certain logos or symbols indicate common ownership or origins and agreements.
If the symbols mean nothing at all, then why do some movie stars brand themselves with certain similar tattoos showing allegiance to the triangle and eye? Why does Shaquille Oneill the former basketball star proudly display his huge free mason ring? Then get several commercials not so long after joining, when not heard from for quite some time, seems like years, before joining?
Personally the biggest impact I find upon myself of corporate logos is to stay away from them as much as possible. To me their products are either over priced or crap to pay for all the advertising they do. Case in point would be one of the most famous sports shoe makers. Early on they had fairly good products. Many years ago I stopped buying them because they changed significantly. No longer put in true arch support, used a narrower foot form, cheapo glue that would give way over time, cheap thread, i.e. quality went down the tubes and price went up because kids wanted them, apparently due to all the slick marketing with athletic "heroes".
Why the bite out of the Apple logo if strictly Newtonian or an Apple Crate beginning? Just because the owner or president of a company tells you something ...does that mean it is true ...or just partially true? Clearly there is no symbolic allegiance to certain other corporate groups. And the symbol wouldn't mean anything to a kid who never heard of the story of adam and eve. However, it is much more memorable than an apple with no bite out of it... or a tree, which several companies use. Whatever the case, it seems like a clever marketing decision.
I never realized it until seeing or listening to a years ago bit about sales psychology. It mentioned perfumes, colognes, etc. for males often have a phallic shape. I chuckled until I noticed the one in my cabinet. Seems silly really since had nothing to do with my purchase since after smelling several it was the only one I actually liked.
The old adage, "sex sells" seems to be the modus operandi of many a marketer, even if it is wasted effort. I doubt Apple would admit that, especially to a class of students. "Well, this marketing guy told us sex sells so if you make the apple like the story of adam and eve, you may subconsciously attract more people to your product... and it will be more recognizable." I'm waiting for the time when they use sequentially flashing rainbow of colors to highlight their apple logo.
This documentary is very one-sided. Why did they not consult any marketing textbooks or interview marketing scholars? In none of the literature of marketing and logo design is there any mention of the symbolism discussed here. Indeed corporations try to sell as much stuff as possible, but associating this with some conspiracy to use archaic symbolism is ludicrous.
Sorry, I know the comment section says 'be cool' but this entire 'documentary' is nothing more than marginally informed, badly edited babbling.
Say it with me people...Pareidolia.
to get a better understanding on this subject take a look at all the products in your home. take inventory of all the logos your attracted to.
you might have a collections of all those mentioned above or of all the same.
Overall, very good. BUT there are some things that are incorrect. The bible NEVER tells the "forbidden" fruit is an apple. It only tells is a fruit. People like to assume so much.
I love a good conspiracy story. Inevitably we stop learning at some point during the investigation and become true believers or pessimistic skeptics . Darwinism come to mind in this instance. Those who believe hold an almost cult like fervency regardless of any new information which may come their way. Even with evidence from a science like quantum physics, they hold tightly to their belief and develop visceral hatred for dissenting views. And visa versa those who believe in an intelligent design.
These young people seem bound to find correlations with what they already hypothesize. This documentary is a perfect example of why civilizations are so slow to move forward into a more cohesive social structure. We want to believe in something, so we set about constructing faux evidence to make it so. Throughout history we have had to secretly produce a renaissance in order to bring us back from the brink of societal extinction. Given our technological pace, I believe it is about time for another one.
I found this very insightful. And according to Jobs, the 'apple', remember its not an apple just a symbol, was derived from his time working at an apple orchard. Imply, youthful determination, work ethic, blah, blah, blah. I believe that's the story put forward in his autobiography. And as for the 666, I use 666 in passwords and such, as I know it is a sense of taboo to Westerns. In Hinduism & Buddhism 6 means perfect and complete, too. So, to me, 666 is a symbol created to divert humans from pursuing perfection in their 3 fold lives. Perhaps the makers of this, in their attempt to break through symbolism, ultimately just show, they are just as trapped as they supposed we are. But good luck.
While I do believe that it is true that people identify with certain symbols, (yin/yang, cross, etc) the idea that corporations incorporate symbols to help sell products is ludicrous. In my opinion, symbols are used soley for product recognition. If you are driving down the street, and you want a big mac, you will start scanning for the golden arch. Thus, the symbol does not sell the product, it only identifies a brand of a product that sold itself.
What is true is that the origin and meaning of most symbols has been lost in translation over time. A swastika does not mean a nazi skinhead, or a fascist ideology, yet since it's use by the 3rd reich, no one dare use it now for fear of retribution, or having the wrong label attached. (misunderstanding) This not only diminishes the value of what a symbol was meant to represent, but exposes the ignorance of human simple mindedness!
With so many billions of people who occupy this planet, why is it so difficult for one to believe that some of these notions, if not all can be true. These symbols in a sense are no different than the tatoos that people put on their bodies. If it's a swastika, it has an origin based on someones belief, and if it is plastered to my body, I must entertain that same belief. If it is a tattoo of the Cross, that symbol has origin and meaning, therefore it is something that I believe in and I wear proudly. I don't know the minds of those who stand behind any of the symbolism depicted in this documentary, and there are those who choose to believe in things at whim just because somebody said to them that something was true, then run the course of their lives believing a lie and finding out later in life what a fool they were when the truth hits them in the face. I think that those who uphold these symbols, whatever they may be, are intelligent men and (or) women and have investigated the meanings behind them, whether true or false. I would rather investigate than follow something that is not beneficial for me to believe in. There is no harm in doing so. With all that being said, I don't think that what is being iterated is all that far fetched.
This film is ridiculous it borders comedy. Unfortunately, it just misses it. I love how they say that these symbols are "sub"conscious (a word neither Freud or Jung used) and tied deeply to people without them even knowing it. But somehow, certain people know about it and use it against everyone else. Isn't it possible, that if what they say is true, and the logos really are collective "sub"conscious images, that regular people like graphic designers might use them because they feel equally tied to them like everyone else.
"Well they could make up new logos" Sure, but why bother when they have an image that speaks to their soul. Or whatever pseudo-psychology they spew about auras and energy. The people supposedly creating this logos are just people, humans like the rest of us, not mass evil doers.
Whether or not you believe in all the crap they're selling about hijacking consciousness or whatever is up to you. But don't try to pass it off as legitimate journalism or science.
This documentary was just a handful of already biased people discussing a topic they obviously believed fervently in. It has no objective evidence, or even a real analysis of anything. The logos are shown briefly and together in clumps for only a few seconds so you hardly have time to see them all. The rest of it, is hippies in a bar talking about the evil establishment. In conclusion, this is NOT a documentary.
pub conversation is farcical. those guys put 2 + 2 together and got 666. utter rubbish
Interesting idea, but the documentary itself could have been more interesting.
i have a starbucks mug i stole from their shop and tbh untill it came on the screen i would have had no idea it had some chick all i could have told you is a green circle with starbucks coffee printed in plain text
This documentary was really, really boring. The people who made this documentary called up Starbucks and Apple and asked questions about their respective logo. Wow! these doc makers are so daring.
I remember sitting on a 7 hour flight to New York, and having to listen to a very boring Swedish man in the seat next to me. Unfortunately, the poor man thought that what he had to say was interesting. It most definitely wasn't. This documentary was on the same level.
is it possible that mermaids are just cool? or an apple with a bite out of it is just more memorable than a whole one?
So what does the Dodge logo mean?
BOM BOM BOM!!!
Consumers didn't realize there was an evil mermaid on Starucks logo!
BOM BOM BOMMM!!!
The Apple workers dont know where the logo derived from!!!
OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoOOoOoooOoOOooO!
Why are the marketing findings kept secret?
Maybe because that if the public new the methods of complex marketing techniques that they would fall apart and stop working along with stop producing profits for the companies that have invested serious money to learn these secrets...
And no they're not hidden from the general public but rather harder to find because, who in the public field could even care about complex marketing strategies.
And why would you give these ingenious billion dollar marketing trade secrets free to the general public that would never even put the methods to good use... Instead of selling the findings to the multi-million dollar a year businesses that are willing to pay tons of money for the strategies
And to show you a couple examples...
Everyone knows that grocery stores spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year learning the what makes people buy the things they buy. And a lot of people know that these stores place certain items in certain places.
This is one of the supposed "Secret" marketing strategies.
Another big trade for these hidden marketing strategies come into play... Casino's which everyone knows that use marketing strategies in order to get you to drop as much money as possible.
It's not that they're secret in any way which anybody with a marketing degree would agree on, it's just not popular subject matter.
This doc moves from a faux analysis about a few logos to a bull***t session with a bunch of people who believe in magic. (ck?) This doc is not even trying to use intellectual tools for understanding symbolism: logic, reasoning, marxist anaylsis or even something called "semiotics" which is the "study of symbols." They don't even get it right when they talk about the work of Freud and Jung, which anyone who has written a term paper in a psychology class would have been able to do. This doc gets a D-
omg we're all gonna die! They've learned to use logo's to make us into mindless robots!! And she's obviously learned how to use sounds to seduce our unnatural desires... ahhh!!!
Interesting doc and funny at times. These "sinister Logos" are made by people called graphic designers, I am one of them. They doc creators should have interviewed a few logo creators to hear what they think about all this, would have been far more enlightening and definitely more mundane (probably why they didn't). I definitely agree there is indeed symbolism we are exposed to with not all together positive motives but the situation is a far cry from what is depicted here.
Seriously entertaining and funny from a graphic designer's perspective and overly misleading for anyone who knows nothing about the identity and branding world.
Advertising is a completely different matter I will admit.
sorry, but this so called "docu" is a waste of time. there's no proof in what the makers claim. it's just their opinion and i don't agree at all.
The narrator's whistling "S" sounds are super distracting and annoying.
My previous comment was way too dismissive of a fairly interesting doc, it does point out that large organisations pilfer symbols; but what don't they do in order to maximise identity/profit.
Sadly they ignored the megasymbol of the west. The one that stood for the way, the light, the truth, "the" book. Long before mass literacy the church used the cross very persuasively. In fact so persuasive it held back the development of humanity for centuries.