The Logo has been with us since the dawn of mankind in one shape or another, markings on cattle, markings on pottery. Very early Christianity used the symbol of the fish to enable identifying who was a christian and who wasn’t: the first ark of the fish was drawn by one person usually on sand and if the second person could draw the second ark to make the complete fish (logo), then it was safe to communicate Christ’s teachings.
In Christology, the Logos (with an ’S’) (Greek: & Lambda; όγος, literally Translates as the ‘Word’, ‘Discourse’, or ‘Reason') it is a name or title of Jesus Christ.
At what point I’m not sure, but the ’S’ was dropped from Logos meaning the ‘word’ to logo meaning the ‘symbol’ etc.
The printing press (1450) is what allowed the Logo to be circulated, everyone wanted their own mark. In the present day of mass communication and in common usage, a company's logo is synonymous with its trademark or brand.
The current era of logo design began with the first abstract logo, the Bass red triangle in 1876, many corporations followed, products, brands, services, agencies, and other entities use an ideogram (sign, icon) or an emblem (symbol) or a combination of sign and emblem as a logo.
Logo design is an important area of graphic design, although with the current proliferation of ads on google offering online logo design services, there is an argument that it doesn’t carry the mystique it once did, I can testify to this first hand from the number of posts that carry unrelated comments on LinkedIn offering logo design, usually offered from India at very low rates.
Designing a great logo often required the involvement of a marketing team teaming up with the graphic design studio. In this day of digital design and ease of communication, it’s no longer always the case. But the designing of a logo whether independently or via a studio still requires clear definition of the concept and values of the brand as well as an understanding of the consumer or target group, followed by the logo design process: research, conceptualisation, investigation, refinement, and final testing across products before adoption and production roll out of the chosen mark.
Graphic: Steven Savva
Ref: wikipedia