“Humanity has been conditioned by symbolism and today we are bombarded by logos. The average American is exposed to 600 commercial messages each day. Some symbols and messages we recognize, and some we don’t. And what we don’t understand, can be used against us.”
– Red Ice TV episode Symbolism in Logos
Logos or symbols are powerful. When they are used like graffiti tags, put everywhere around us, they make fame to the product they symbolize. The more you tag, the more fame you get. Logos alone can also trigger the desire to buy something. When we see a simple logo of chocolate product or company without any other image or slogan, the logo still means pleasure and a taste to us if we have tasted it before or we have been fed with images and ideas how the product will cause pleasure. We want to have it.
Symbols are the language for the subconscious mind. They appeal more to the subconscious mind than the conscious. If you don’t understand what an image, or symbol or logo, means, you are exposed to someone else’s underlying message that controls your subconscious mind.
This Red Ice TV episode “Symbolism in Logos” shows common symbols underlying in the logos of the most famous companies in the world. It’s only scratching the surface of the topic in the end but in the first part of the film it examines the logos of Starbucks and Apple very closely.
What does it mean to have a mermaid in the Starbucks logo? They ask a customer of Starbucks does he know what that logo means and then they suggest that maybe he feels that Starbacks is comfortable and relaxing because of her, the mermaid in the logo, spreading her twin tail.
The film shows the first Apple’s logo that was designed by Steve Jobs and drawn by Ronald Wayne. In the first Apple logo there was Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree. The film says how the first Apple computers were sold for the symbolic prize of 666 dollars 66 cents. Is Apple’s logo, a bitten apple, a reference to the Garden of Eden? Does the Apple logo mean being evil?
Red Ice TV asks people on the public places what they think of the sets of logos showing the exact same thing, such as serpents and spirals, the arch, pyramid and eye and logos presenting the sun.
The film has guests such as Michael Tsarion, Neil Hague, Ralph Ellis, Leo Rutherford, Neil Kramer, Dan Tatman and Peter Taylor.
Very interesting documentary to see and learn from.
