Animal Logos: A New Approach to Logo Design

The logo is the first thing that comes to mind when we think of any business. We recognize a business by its logo. So, it becomes important to make the logos interesting and unique. In order to achieve this objective, logo designers constantly try to come up with new ideas and innovations.

Using animal logos as the trademark of a business is one such approach in the world of logo designing. Earlier, animal logos appeared only in organizations related to animal welfare or companies manufacturing products for animals. But today, businesses use the unique qualities of the animals in their logos to reflect the vision or spirit of their organizations.

A few such companies which chose to use animal logos, and thus introduced a new trend in logo design are described below.

The Horse

Two car manufacturing companies feature the horse in their logo designs.

Ferrari

Ferrari is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Italy. It was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929 as Scuderia Ferrari. The company is well known for its participation in racing, especially in Formula One, where it has attained great success.

Ferrari has used a black prancing horse on a yellow background as its logo, usually with letters ‘S’ and ‘F’ which stands for Scuderia Ferrari. This jumping stallion is known as ‘Rampante Cavallo’. This horse honors an Italian flying champion, who lost his life in World War I and is believed to bring victory to the driver.

Porsche

Porsche Automobil Holding SE, usually shortened to Porsche SE, is a German manufacturer of high performance luxury automobiles. The Porsche logo is that of the coat of arms of the city of Stuttgart which was built on the site of a stud farm. So, the horse logo was an obvious choice. The antlers and the red and black stripes are part of the arms of the Kingdom of Wurttemberg.

The Leaping Cat

Jaguar

Jaguar is a well known car manufacturer in England, founded by Sir William Lyons in 1992. The Jaguar logo was seen for the first time in 1935 and was used on a new car model, known as S.S. 100 Jaguar. This logo has a Jaguar leaping diagonally over the company’s name. It signifies the speed and power of the car’s performance.

Puma

Puma is a German-based multinational company, producing world-class sportswear and athletic shoes. Rudolf Dassler, along with his younger brother Adolf Dassler owned the company Adidas. In 1948, Rudof separated from Adidas and created his own shoe company called Puma.

The Puma logo first appeared in 1948, and the company still continues with the same logo with minor alterations. The logo has an image of the leaping puma, otherwise known as cougar or panther, which is a powerful beast and an active hunter. The Puma logo gives a powerful identity to its products. It characterizes the brand’s integrity and the product’s proficiency in the market.

The Crocodile

Lacoste is a famous apparel company known for its tennis t-shirts. It also manufactures shoes, perfume, leather goods, watches and many other products. It was founded in 1933 by the renowned tennis player, Rene? Lacoste.

Interestingly, the green crocodile in the Lacoste logo also has a tennis history. Rene? Lacoste was nicknamed “The Crocodile” by the U.S. press, after he won a bet with the captain of the French Davis Cup team. The captain had promised to buy Rene? Lacoste an alligator-skin suitcase if he won all the important matches. This crocodile logo still continues to be the trademark of the company.

The Bird

Dove

Dove is a personal care brand owned by Unilever. It has a huge variety of hair and skin products. Unilever first introduced their product in the 1950s for the purpose of serving military personnel. At that time, the Navy needed a soap to protect their skins from drying due to over exposure to the rough sea water or sand.

When the soap became popular, the company decided to launch it as a commercial product in 1957 and it began to sell with the brand name of “dove”.

The dove bird in the Dove logo stands for peace and honors the sacrifice of the military personnel for whom it was originally manufactured. It also stands for the mild nature of the various Dove products.

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking service that enables its users to send and receive messages that are known as ‘tweets’. Tweets are text based posts which help people connect to each other. Twitter has gained immense popularity worldwide, since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey.

The story of the twitter bird began when Twitter discovered an illustration of a bird by a British illustrator, Simon Oxley on iStockphoto. Twitter paid $7 for the rights of that illustration and used the bird since then to decorate their website.

The cute blue twitter bird is called Ollie. It is the official mascot of the Twitterrific Twitter application For Mac OS and iPhone.  Though the bird is not twitter’s official logo, we see it representing twitter everywhere.  It is hugely popular and represents twitter better than its present official logo.

The Fox

Mozilla Firefox is a free web browser, coming from Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. It is the second most used browser all over the world. The Mozilla project came to be known as the Mozilla Firefox on 9^th February, 2004.

The logo features a fox around a blue globe. It is one of the most widely recognized brand marks in the world of technology and is a powerful symbol of everything that the company stands for. The logo reflects the company’s global appeal and its agility.

The Bat

Bacardi is a liquor company, well-known for its production of rum. The company sells over 200 million bottles per year in nearly 100 countries. Bacardi has its headquarters in Hamilton, Bermuda and produces pure, well refined rum, with a distinct taste.

If you ever wondered why a bat features in a liquor manufacturing company’s logo, here is the story for you. In 1862, Facundo Bacardi acquired a distillery in Santiago de Cuba. Here he developed a method to refine sugar and liquor into mild, white colored rum. As a great number of bats resided under the roof of this distillery, it was decided that the image of the bat would appear on the brand’s logo.

It is also interesting to know that bats are a symbol of good fortune in Cuba.

The Cow

The laughing cow is a brand of cheese products, launched in the year 1921 by Le?on Bel. The laughing cow cheese has been enjoyed by generations of consumers as spreadable wedges, cubes or slices.

The laughing cow logo is that of a red and jovial cow, always shown as wearing earrings similar to that of the boxes in which the cheese is manufactured. Bel himself made the original drawing of a logo. Initially, the cow wasn’t shown to be laughing or wearing any earings. In 1924, Benjamin Rabier altered the drawing and the company continues to have the same logo even today with certain minor variations.

Wondering why the cow has been given such a hilarious expression? Maybe to suggest the happy and healthy life that the consumers will enjoy as an effect of the healthy cheese products.

The Panda

Though there is nothing unconventional about using an animal logo for a wildlife conservation organization, the panda logo of World Wildlife Fund deserves a special mention.

The WWF is an international organization working on issues regarding conservation, research and protection of the environment. It is the world’s largest independent conservation organization that has over 5 million supporters and is working in more than 90 countries. It supports around 1300 environmental projects around the world.

The first WWF panda logo was designed in 1961, by its founder Sir Peter Scott. In 1986, this logo was further simplified and the name WWF was added to it. The present logo was designed in the year 2000, with a change in font.

The image has immense appeal, by using the natural white space between black shapes to create the image of a panda. It also reflects WWF’s values by using the image of the panda, which is an endangered species of animal.

More famous animal logos can be seen below.