From the moment you wake up in the morning to check your phone to the moment you fall asleep cradling your phone like your old Teddy Ruxpin, you are bombarded with thousands of logos every day. You could say that the only way to avoid this oversaturation of corporate branding would be to live on a deserted island, but even Tom Hanks had a branded volleyball friend in Cast Away. You probably looked at these logos with little to no thought, but just like a 17th century work of art, most logos have deeper, and, dare we say, hidden meanings behind them.
Domino's
The story of Domino's is a tale right of a mainstream politician's book of campaign speeches. Tom Monaghan, who grew up in an orphanage, secured $900 to buy a tiny pizza place called DomiNick's in Michigan in 1960. Five years later, he bought two more locations. The previous owner refused Monaghan the right to use his name for the new restaurants, so a delivery driver suggested the name Domino's and the rest is pizza history. The three dots on the domino on the pizza chain's logo represent the three original Domino's locations.
According to Logaster, Monaghan was going to add another dot to the domino in the logo after every new location opened up. If they went with their original plan, Domino's would have the most messiest logo in branding history, with close to 12,000 dots to represent locations worldwide. Although the logo has gone through stylistic changes in the last five decades, the three dots remain the same.
Subaru
The the cluster of stars in the Subaru logo aren't just there to look sparkly: they're actually a group of stars in the Taurus constellation called Pleiades. In Japanese, this constellation is called Subaru, which means "unite."
The largest star in the logo represents Fuji Heavy Industries, and the five smaller stars are for the five companies that merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries. The blue background on the logo is there because the stars in this constellation are a deep shade of blue. Pleiades also goes by the name Seven Sisters, which is also the name of a group of women's colleges in America — a cool twist of fate, considering the love many lesbians in America famously have for the brand
RCA
RCA's famous logo of an adorable dog named Nipper with his head in a phonograph can be traced back to the late 1890s. RCA's first corporate logo was taken from a painting titled "His Master's Voice" by Francis Barraud. The U.K. brand The Gramophone Company bought the rights to the painting in 1899 and eventually even changed their company's name to HMV in honor of the painting. Someone from the Victor Talking Machine Company, which later became RCA, saw the HMV logo abroad and bought the rights to use it stateside.
If you've ever complained about the oversaturation of advertising in the United States, you can definitely blame it partly on this dog, which had his mug plastered from New York to Los Angeles before Spuds MacKenzie was even a twinkle in his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's eye.
Lacoste
Lacoste has cemented itself as the shirt worn with the collar up by every preppy dude who was kind of a jerk in an '80s movie, but before the infamous crocodile was a status symbol, it was simply a cute representation of a tennis player's nickname. In the 1920s, René Lacoste was a tennis super star who ditched his bulky attire for a cotton, short-sleeved shirt primarily worn by British polo players. His nickname in America was The Alligator, but because even back in the 1920s nobody knew the differences between alligators and crocodiles, when he returned to his native France, they called him The Crocodile.
Embracing this badass new nickname, he started to wear blazers, shirts, and sweaters with his own personal logo, on and off the tennis court. When Lacoste retired in 1931, he began to mass market his shirts, but it wasn't until the 1950s, when the brand landed in the United States and developed a following with tennis players, golfers, and teenagers whose parents could probably get them out of a DUI, that it became a fashion icon.
Tostitos
A party isn't a party without tortilla chips, salsa, and guacamole. So it's no surprise that Tostitos wanted to embrace their identity as a snack frequently served at parties and get-togethers. The Frito-Lay brand, which has been on grocery store shelves since 1979, revamped their logo in 2003 (and again in 2013) to secretly show that, like going on a date, eating Tostitos is better when another person is involved.
If you look closely at the "T", "I", and second "T" in the word "Tostitos," it shows two people (the "Ts") sharing a single chip and dipping it in a bowl (the "I") of red salsa. According to a 2013 press release, the new logo and packaging is meant to illustrate "the look and feel of a 'party in the bag.'" Tostitos really wears their party animal tendencies like a badge of honor, but they're still the responsible one of the group. Recently, the brand launched a bag so technologically advanced that it detects if you've been consuming alcohol and will call an Uber if you had too much to drink. Good lookin' out, Tostitos.
Toyota
While driving behind a Prius that's going 10 miles per hour under the speed limit on a single-lane highway, did you ever think what the heck is the Toyota logo supposed to be? What is it, a saintly almond wearing a halo? Toyota is the world's largest auto manufacturer and has one of the most recognizable logos, but the meaning behind the loops are a mystery to most people.
Toyota unveiled its current logo in 1990, and it's probably safe to say that they're not going to retire it for quite awhile. According to Toyota, the three ellipses symbolize "the unification of the hearts of our customers and the heart of Toyota products" and the background is for the brand's "technological advancement and the boundless opportunities ahead." So definitely not a holy nut.
Baskin-Robbins
When Baskin-Robbins recruited the advertising juggernaut Ogilvy & Mather in 1953, the ad firm wanted to highlight that the company had an astonishing number of ice cream flavors. Considering that whenever you go to Baskin-Robbins they're always out of the flavors that you want, it might be hard to believe that they have more than 31 flavors today, but after six decades, the "31" is still hidden in their logo.
If you look at the "B" and the "R" on the company's revamped 2006 logo, the curve of the "B" is a 3 and the first line in the "R" is a 1 to represent the 31 flavors nickname that has been with the company for over six decades
United States Cyber Command
The United States Cyber Command has the important job of protecting the country's military networks from cyber attacks, and they also have a logo with a meaning so deeply hidden it needed to be hacked by a professional technology security expert and not a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring.
In 2010, Computer World magazine reported that threat researcher and antivirus vendor Sean-Paul Correll was the first to figure out the hidden message in the logo. Correll figured out that the characters in the gold ring of the logo are an MD5 hash. To those of us who aren't tech experts, an MD5 is a "128-bit cryptographic hash most often used to verify file integrity." Correll was able to decode the tiny characters, which ended up being the organization's mission statement.
Roxy
Frequently worn by beach babes, surfer chicks, and 1990s dELiA*s catalog models, Roxy was initially developed as a women's swimsuit line from the popular surf, skate, and snow brand Quiksilver in 1990, but it wasn't until three years later, when Roxy started to get a cult following from trendy laid back California girls, that their recognizable logo was born.
If you look very closely at the Roxy heart-shaped crest, it is actually formed by two Quiksilver logos tilted. The Quiksilver logo represents the brand's surf (the wave) and snow (the mountain) sports focus. Despite starting life as a swimsuit line, Roxy has been producing clothing and accessories for both the beach and the slopes for over 25 years, and their logo is tribute to the brand's big bro.
Mercedes-Benz
When talking about symbols of luxury, the simple three-pointed star of Mercedes-Benz carries a lot of street cred. Or if we're trying to be fancy, it carries a lot of cachet. You know you just read that like the guy in the old Grey Poupon ads.
The folks at the auto blog The News Wheel explain that the Mercedes-Benz logo didn't start off as a logo at all, but rather a star drawn on a postcard sent by Gottlieb Daimler to his wife in the 1870s to represent the location of his house and how light will "shine over his factory and bring prosperity." Daimler's sons Paul and Adolf began to use a three-pointed star logo for their auto manufacturing brand DMG in the early 1900s. When DMG merged with Benz & Cie in 1926, they included the famous star with a laurel wreath. The wreath has since been abandoned, but the three points in the star represent complete domination of land, sea, and air. It makes total sense now why there are more Mercedes-Benz Decepticons than Autobots.
Northwest Airlines
No, it's not the new airline for Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's daughter. Northwest Airlines flew the skies from 1926 until 2010 when their merger with Delta was finalized. Although as a company they've gone the way of TWA, Pan Am, and a certain airline owned by a certain president, Northwest Airlines is still known for their logo that they used from 1989 until 2003.
The classic Northwest Airlines logo has a single N and a triangle that's also a W created by the wonderful use of negative space. The triangle represents a compass and is pointing to, you guessed it, northwest.
Le Tour de France
It's probably the only time besides the Summer Olympics when you watch bicycle racing on TV, but the real unsung hero of the yearly French bicycle rally is the Tour de France logo. According to the Creative Bloq, the current Le Tour de France logo was created in 2002 by Joel Guenoun and has been used since the 2003 event that marked the race's 100th anniversary.
The yellow represents the maillot jaune (That means "yellow jersey" for those of you who forgot eighth grade French), the jersey given to the leader after every leg of the race, but it also forms the front wheel of a bicycle. The rear wheel is represented by the O in the word "tour," and the R is a bicyclist.
Unilever
Unilever is one of those consumer goods companies that practically run the world. They have over 1,000 brands that they own. Go ahead, grab a can of Axe body spray you probably have next to you and flip it around. Yup, that's the Unilever logo, but what's all of those little logos inside of the big U? According to Unilever, there are 25 mini logos inside of their logo, and "each icon has a rich meaning … and represents some aspect of our effort to make sustainable living commonplace."
Some of the logos make sense, like a strand of hair to represent the shampoo brands they own and an ice cream cone because they own brands like Good Humor, but others are a bit of a stretch, like a simple swirl that represents the company's "passion for great flavors and taste" or a bee that supposed to mean "the community spirit of our people and our commitment to find innovative ways of working to reduce our environmental footprint."
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