As you open the envelope and pull out the gift card, you notice the wavy hair, captivating eyes,\nknowing smile, twin tails, and other familiar features, and you know without having to read a\nword on the card that you have a Starbucks gift card, for the Starbucks logo is one of the most\nrecognizable of all corporate logos worldwide.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If, however, you have not been a Starbucks patron for at least several years, you may be\nunaware that the logo has not always looked like the one on that gift card or that it has a rich\nhistory involving several transformations.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1971, Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegel founded Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and\nSpice in Seattle, Washington, to sell coffee beans. Immediately, the founders knew they needed\na unique, catchy logo.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wishing to use a logo evoking coffee\u2019s maritime history and Seattle\u2019s own ties to the sea, the\nfounders discovered their inspiration in one of the many old seafaring books they pored over.\nThere, they found a Norse woodcut from the 16th century depicting a two-tailed siren.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Greek epic The Odyssey <\/em>reveals sirens as female monsters with beautiful voices whose\nsongs lure sailors to them only to be killed and devoured. Other cultures have made sirens and\nmermaids virtually synonymous, with the sirens\u2019 motives ranging from benign to sinister but\nalways with the common thread of beauty and irresistible allure.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did the founders wish to suggest overpowering temptation through their logo? No one but they\nseems to know for sure, but from that woodcut, they fashioned the original logo: a topless siren\nwith long hair and two tails.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1987 brought a change of ownership (Howard Schultz), name (Starbucks Coffee), direction\n(selling brewed coffee and more), and logo. Simpler and more polished, the new logo still\nfeatured a full-body version of the siren\/mermaid, now with the navel visible, and the company\nname encircling the figure (the \u201cdonut\u201d design); new were two stars in the \u201cdonut\u201d and a starred\ncrown atop the mermaid\u2019s head. In addition, to symbolize freshness and growth, the designers\nused a green palette with black and white present as well. Since then, the logo has undergone\nrevision twice, but the 1991 version was far more similar to the current one than the original\n1971 version was.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1992, Starbucks became a publicly traded company, and the logo saw more changes.\nPerhaps most immediately significant was the close-up perspective of the mermaid; instead of\nshowing the mermaid\u2019s full figure, the logo showed her from the waist up, with the navel no\nlonger shown, and with the ends of the two tails visible. Still present were the \u201cdonut\u201d design\nand the wavy hair cascading sensuously over the breasts.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most recently, the logo changed in 2011. One reason for the change was to mark the\ncompany\u2019s 40th anniversary, but there were also two \u201cproblems\u201d the designers wanted to\naddress.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first was that the company had learned that the \u201cdonut\u201d design drew so much attention to\nthe words that overseas competitors were creating knockoff logos. To deal with this, the\ncompany abandoned the \u201cdonut\u201d and enlarged the image of the mermaid. Gone was the\ncompany name, and that actually helped send the message that Starbucks was about more\nthan coffee, as by then it sold other breakfast and lunch sandwiches and other foods and\nbeverages.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second \u201cproblem\u201d really came about during the redesign process. With better technology,\nthe team was able to create images in higher resolutions and which looked more realistic. As\nthey \u201cperfected\u201d the mermaid\u2019s features, they came to feel she was \u200btoo <\/em>perfect, almost\nimpossibly perfect, and they felt it was due to the symmetry of her facial features. And that is\nwhy one side of the nose dips slightly lower than the other does; the designers felt that made\nthe mermaid human and attainable enough to \u201cwork.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n However one perceives the Starbucks mermaid– perfect, real, benevolent, a seductress, a\nfigure some are reading way too much into, or whatever else– there is no disputing that this\nlogo is one of the most familiar and effective corporate symbols in the entire world.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As you open the envelope and pull out the gift card, you notice the wavy hair, captivating eyes, knowing smile, twin tails, and other familiar features, and you know without having to read a word on the card that you have a Starbucks gift card, for the Starbucks logo is one of the most recognizable … Continue reading Top Logo Stories – The Story Behind the Starbucks Logo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_eb_attr":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-logo-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flocksy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}First Makeover\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Second Makeover\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s Version\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Fixture in Our World\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n