According to the RAE, a logo is the graphic symbol of a company, commemoration, brand, or product. But to simplify the definition, we can say it is the most representative visual element of an organization — an essential piece within any marketing strategy.
Its purpose is to be memorable, but what’s the secret behind a successful logo?
At Agencia Adhoc, we don’t believe there’s a magic formula for getting a design right. However, we do believe that studying past works, understanding the brand and what it wants to convey, and grasping the client’s taste are essential pillars. Above all, we believe in learning from the most famous and successful designs created by major agencies.
We asked our design department, and these are their favorite brands:
The new version of the Repsol logo changes its colors and adds volume, giving the famous sphere a solid and consistent appearance. Although Pepe Cruz Novillo updated the brand in 1996, making that 1988 horizon more symmetrical and simple, Interbrand gave it a new twist — respecting its essence while modernizing it with a 100% 21st-century look.
Although it’s not particularly striking, this corporate image designed by the KW43 studio goes far beyond a simple visual identity. By playing with typography shaped like musical notes, they sought to develop applications that could reproduce the sound of messages. At Agencia Adhoc, we find this idea fascinating.
Despite being controversial, our creative director highlights the disruptive and eye-catching nature of this logo — two essential qualities for brands with short life cycles. The design was created by the Wolff Olins studio.
It was adapted to countless colors, styles, and textures, and although it wasn’t particularly loved, at Agencia Adhoc we wanted to highlight it for fully accomplishing its purpose.
The new identity of Spain’s leading paint brand is a true revolution. The advertising agency We Are Small carried out a complete rebranding, using isometric perspective as a nod to the world of architecture and interior design. They explain it better themselves here.
From the initial brief sent by the Ministry to Estudio Mucho, it was emphasized that the design should move away from “Don Quixote” or any literary work and instead focus on the writer himself.
They worked on the letter C — for Cervantes and Centenary — and transformed it into the well-known silhouette of the author’s attire, thus creating a logo applicable to multiple formats.
This airline brand created by Saffron aimed to express naturalness, closeness, and everyday simplicity through its shapes. The inspiration came from the tablecloths that cover most Mediterranean restaurant tables — or those of a picnic.
A project by professional branding consultancy Johnson Banks, this design uses a custom typeface that references URL language, reinforcing the idea that the internet is the very essence of this non-profit organization born from the famous Mozilla Firefox browser.
MailChimp is a technology company founded in 2001. By removing the classic Script typeface that characterized it and introducing a brighter, bolder color like yellow, the team at Collins worked to capture the spirit of the original brand while giving prominence to the chimpanzee — which in the previous branding strategy only appeared occasionally.
Changing a 100-year-old brand is no easy task. The rebranding challenge for Cuatrecasas was carried out by Mucho and It Comunicación, who defined the strategy and distilled the values of this leading firm specializing in business law into a simple yet powerful logo. To see the full identity, click here.
