Logo Evolution

Evolution is a natural part of branding and running a business. Times change, people change, and if you don't change along with them and keep yourself fresh and vibrant, you will likely be left in the dust! One way that it is pretty easy to track the changing face of a business over time is by looking at its logo. Some companies seldom tweak their logo, having instead found one so classic, enduring and effective that the same logo they had 50 years ago is still just as relevant and striking today. For example, here is Coca Cola's logo in 1886:




...And here is the Coca Cola logo today:




Other companies keep some of the same elements of their logos, but make slight changes over time, like Coppertone.
Then:



Now:



Still others continue to have great success despite bearing little or no resemblance to their original marketing materials.

You can see some examples here:




Apparently we seem to fall into the category of companies who change their logo... a lot! Perhaps too much. We have also somehow ended up diversifying ourselves to the point that we have so many brands we are working under that it is very confusing! Here is the evolution of the Hudson Photography family of logos. It only goes back as far as 2004 because I am too lazy to go down to the garage and dig through boxes to find print versions of our older logos! : )





See? LOTS OF LOGOS. So to remedy this, we've decided to do our best to consolidate our logo down into one, hopefully one that will serve us well enough that we can actually stick with it for a little while. Ever since Jason and I started talking about coming up with a new logo, I have been saturating my brain with information about design, branding, colors, fonts, layout and everything else related to how a company presents itself to the world. The more I read up on it, and the more I looked around, the more I noticed that logos are EVERYWHERE!

Once I became aware of this, it seems like everywhere I go I am mentally filing logos away as effective or ineffective. I was surprised once I learned more about the elements of good logo design to discover how many products in my everyday life are putting the elements of good logo design to work to represent their brand. Here are a few of my favorite logos that I ran across while researching. These are not necessarily what we're going for, but I thought these worked exceptionally well for the products they are affiliated with.





It should hopefully go without saying, but just to cover my behind, let me be VERY CLEAR that all of the logos pictured here are copyrighted by their owners and the sole property of the companies which they represent. My goal in looking at them is not to in any way duplicate them or pull ideas from them, but actually quite the opposite. We have looked at every photographer's logo we could get our hands on in an effort to make sure that ours can not in any way be construed as copying anyone! Also it is just interesting to see all of the different, creative things that people can come up with using essentially the same process and materials. That said, here is a selection of other wedding professionals' logos that are featured on "The It List" on the Southern Weddings blog. Click on over there if you want to check out the awesome websites of some of the best wedding people in the business! Here is a selection of their logos:






Next up... Our logo!