A logo is something that defines a brand. It defines what a company stands for and how consumers can associate themselves with the brand. Companies spend millions of dollars in the design of their logos so that they can have unique logos to stand out from their competitors. We see hundreds of logos every day, but there are a few that just stick in our minds. Maybe it’s the colors of the logo or a hidden element that adds to the aesthetics. We bring to you ten such fascinating facts behind world-famous logos.

1 The FedEx logo has an intentionally hidden white arrow between the letters “E” and “x” that was created by blending two different fonts together. It has won over 40 design awards and is renowned for the best use of negative space.

The FedEx logo is one of the most recognized logos in the world. But the bold lettering and bright colors of the logo are not what makes the logo great. It’s the hidden arrow between the letters “E” and “x” that adds a certain charisma to the logo and is the perfect use of negative space. The design is both simple and clear.

Lindon Leader designed the FedEx logo in 1994. This logo is a legend when it comes to designers. It has won around 40 design awards and had been termed as one of the best logos, out of the top eight, to be designed in the past 35 years.

When Lindon started working on the logo for FedEx, the CEO Fred Smith said two things, “You can make them pink and green for all I care; just give me a good reason why. My trucks are moving billboards. I better be able to see a FedEx truck loud and clear from five blocks away.”

Lindon started working keeping these two things in mind. While he was tweaking with the letters, he saw a small arrow appear between the letter E and x. He had to mix the best qualities of two different fonts, Univers and Futura Bold, to make the arrow look natural and unforced. When few final designs were showcased to FedEx, the CEO was the first to notice the hidden arrow in Lindon’s design and everyone loved it! (source)

2 VLC Media Player uses a traffic cone as its logo because the students who wrote the code for the VideoLAN project had a traffic cone collection.

We have all wondered at some point in our lives what the traffic cone in VLC Media Player stands for. Well, today you can put all your speculations to rest! The creator of VLC Media Player is the ViaRézo Association of the École Centrale’s Networking Students’ Association. Once, some students from the association came back drunk with a traffic cone. They then started a cone collection.

When the VideoLAN project began to develop the VLC Media Player, they decided to use the cone as their logo. (source)

3 The logo for Domino’s Pizza has three dots because there were only three original Domino’s stores in 1965. They planned to add a new dot for every new store, but the idea was dropped due to the fast growth of the franchise.

Domino’s was originally DomiNick’s, a small pizza store that was purchased by Tom Monaghan and his brother James. The brothers decided to split their time to run the business. But James was not willing to let go of his full-time job as a postman to run the pizza business. He quit and sold his half of the business to Tom.

By 1965, Tom purchased two additional pizza stores and expanded his business. He wanted all the three stores to share the same brand name. When the original owner of DomiNick’s forbade him from using that original name, Tom renamed the stores Domino’s after a suggestion from one of his employees.

Since the business was comprised of only three stores at that time, Tom decided to add three dots to the logo. He also planned to include one dot for every new store that he added to the brand. But the business expanded so fast that Tom had to drop the idea. If they had continued the idea, the logo would have had more than 13,000 dots by now! (source)

4 The Walt Disney logo is not based on Walt’s own signature. It is, in fact, based on an employee’s version of it who used to sign fan mail on Walt’s behalf. The stylized version got so famous that Walt Disney had problem signing his own autographs!

The Walt Disney logo is recognized by people all across the world and across all age groups. The original logo had just the words “Walt Disney Presents.” The image of the castle was added much later.

But that is not the intriguing part. Most of us believe that it’s Walt Disney’s signature that appears on the logo. But that is not the case. It is, in fact, a stylized version of Walt’s actual signature created by a group of artists.

When the company started to grow, Walt didn’t have much time to sign every piece of fan mail that he received. His secretary and some other employees were the ones who would take care of fan mails and sign them on Walt’s behalf. This led to a situation in the 1940s where there existed more fake versions of Walt’s signature than actual and original ones. The stylized version became so popular that it gave Walt Disney a hard time while signing autographs. Over the years, Walt tried to change his signature to match the stylized version, but you can still see the difference. (source)

5 The logo for Bluetooth, which was named after the Danish King Harald Bluetooth, is derived from the Danish letters that represent the king’s initials – H (ᚼ) and B (ᛒ).

Ericsson named their revolutionary technology “Bluetooth” after Harald Bluetooth who ruled Denmark as their king between 958 and 986 CE. During his rule, he introduced Christianity to Denmark and Norway and contributed to the unification of various Danish tribes under one kingdom. This analogy was used while naming the wireless technology Bluetooth because, just like the king united people, the technology enabled the unification of various devices and made communication between them easier.

The logo is designed by using a bind rune. A bind rune is basically a combination of runes or letters that were used to write Germanic languages before Latin letters were adopted. In the logo, the two Younger Futhark runes, or more commonly called Scandinavian runes, that represent the king’s initials are merged – ᚼ (Hagall) and ᛒ (Bjarkan). (source)