Humble Beginnings: Famous Company Logos That Have Changed Over Time

Companies young and old go through changes and growing pains over the years. It’s hard to believe how much some big-name company logos have changed while others seem to have changed hardly at all. Check out the transformations. 

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Not only did Nike change its logo but its name too. The name was initially Blue Ribbon Sports. The original Nike logo came along with the name change in 1971. It featured the signature swoop but with the word “Nike” overlaid.

Related: 30 of the Oldest Companies in America 

The Nike swoop is one of the most recognizable logos in the sports industry. The shape didn’t change from the original but the company dropped the text and made the logo solid rather than being an outline.

Related: Giant Companies You Didn't Know Are Family-Owned

When the company was founded in 1949, it produced only sports shoes. As such, a shoe is the prominent feature of the original logo. The text Adidas Sportschuhe (German for “sports shoe”) is underneath. The “d’s” and the shoe formed the three strips which persist in today’s logo.

The simpler rebranded three-bar logo, sometimes with the text “Adidas” beneath it, sometimes without, was introduced in 1989. It remains much the same today. The three bars can also still be found on Adidas shoes. 

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In 1937, Volkswagen, or VW, was formed by a Nazi trade union organization. The original logo included the letters VW stacked one atop the other with what some have thought to be to a swastika, the Nazi symbol, around the two. According to VW, the swastika shape was in fact supposed to be a cogwheel.

It wasn’t until 1945, after the Second World War, that the supposed cog wheel transformed into a simple circle with VW still stacked in the middle. The most modern VW logo was designed in 2020 to give the appearance of being 3-dimensional.

The birth of the four rings that now define Audi occurred in 1932 when four different German automakers, including one already named Audi, joined. The very first logo for the original Audi company was a single circle with a 1 atop a half circle on top of a triangle that said “Audi”. 

Now Audi’s logo consists of the same four circles but without any additional fanfare. In 2016, the logo was revamped to look better on paper and online in the digital age. The design was once further refined in 2022 with a switch from chrome rings to white ones with a black border.

AT&T has been around since the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1867. Its original logo, from 1889, featured a bell, with the words “Long Distance Telephone” overlaid.

It wasn’t until 1983, after six logo versions that the bell went by the wayside, and the now-recognizable circles were introduced. The most recent logo, a blue and white sphere to the left of the lowercase letters “at&t” was introduced in 2005.

AT&T’s competitor Verizon has a much shorter history. It was formed in 2000, so its logo from then is not so different from what we see today. The red check mark was over the word Verizon whereas the “Z” was also red and stretched out under the “on”, seemingly to represent speed.

Verizon’s current logo, introduced in 2015, includes simpler text without the pizzazz of the red Z. The red check mark is also more subtle but still no less recognizable than it was in 2000.

The original logo for Pepsi-Cola, which was introduced in 1898 (and previously known as “Brad’s Drink”), featured an elaborate swirling font with the company's name in spiky red letters. The overall appearance at the time was similar to that of Coca-Cola, which was invented 13 years earlier.

The evolution of the Pepsi logo went through a variety of changes over the past 125 years to what we see now. The recently unveiled 2023 logo, features a throwback look with a curving white stripe with red above and blue below within a circle and retains the bottle cap shape of some earlier Pepsi logos. The company also moved "Pepsi" back into the logo in a nostalgic nod to logos of the 70s and 80s. The company used a richer "electric" blue and a more modern font to give the logo a more contemporary look.

When it was designed in 1971, the Starbucks logo featured a twin-tailed, bare-chested siren surrounded by the company's longer name at the time, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spices.

Thankfully Starbucks has since decided to do away with its topless logo, choosing instead to focus on her face (though you can still see her tails). The company eventually removed the word “Starbucks” from its logo in 2011. It felt confident that “Starbucks' global reach extends beyond the bounds of coffee, and our Siren, now so familiar, can surely stand on her own,” according to the company website.

FedEx’s original logo from 1971, featured the block text “Federal Express” written inside a rectangle. The red, white, and blue color scheme was meant to make customers associate it with the authority of the American government.

In 1994, FedEx introduced its second logo which has persisted until today. It now features the simpler text FedEx, with “Fed” written in purple and “Ex” in orange. If you look closely, the shape between the “E” and “x” forms a small arrow showing the company gets things to where they are going. (The company briefly had another version from 1991 to 1994 with the shortened “FedEx” but it was only used for business communications, not advertising.)

The first of Microsoft’s logos was introduced in 1975. The original logo featured the text MICRO slightly above SOFT (the company’s original name was Micro-Soft). Each letter is made up of multiple lines giving it a somewhat psychedelic look.

Microsoft’s red, green, yellow, and blue squares are now seen around the world. Beside them, the word Microsoft is written in a rather plain font (known as Segoe IU). The new logo was unveiled in 2012 which marked the first time there was any color in the logo.

When it was formed in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple had a much more complex logo than it does now. It featured Sir Issac Newton sitting beneath an apple tree with a lone apple above his head. The logo also featured the company’s name, Apple Computer Co., on a ribbon wrapping around the image.

The bitten apple logo has existed ever since 1976 once the original logo was replaced at the end of the company’s first year in business. The color scheme has changed throughout the years and is now most often grey.

The golden arches that are now recognized around the world were introduced in 1953 with the building of the first McDonald’s restaurant in LA. However, rather than the logo, they were actually part of the architecture — twin golden arches on either side of the restaurant. Meanwhile, the official logo was a little man holding a sign advertising hamburgers.

The golden arches of the first McDonald’s building eventually gave way to a new and improved McDonald’s logo. The golden arches in the shape of an M were brought about in 1968. In 2003, the arches were made thicker and shadows were added to the design. In print, the shadow is often left out in favor of solid yellow arches today.

Colonel Harland Sanders, who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), has always been featured as part of the company's logo. A minimalist portrait of the Colonel sporting a bow tie appeared after a hand-drawn typeface of the company's name when the first franchise opened in 1952 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Even before that, in 1950, Colonel Sanders never went out unless he dressed in his signature white suit, according to the company.

Colonel Sanders continues to be a household face, but the logo looks much different today. The modern logo, launched in 2018, now features a contemporary rendering of Sanders’ face on a trapezodial outline that resembles the company’s iconic red and white striped bucket of chicken with “KFC” in italicized black letters below.

When Amazon was founded in 1994 as an online bookseller, the logo featured a solid black A with a winding vertical white line meant to represent the brand’s namesake river. A lowercase “amazon.com” in sans serif font was placed below the logo. It’s hard now to imagine the company with anything other than its updated logo.

Since 2000, Amazon’s logo has featured the classic curved yellow arrow under the text, “Amazon”. The arrow goes from the “a” to the “z” indicating that customers can find anything from A to Z.

Visa was founded as Bank Americard in 1958 when it lauded the first general-purpose credit card that featured a “revolving credit” and a $300 limit. The company’s card-shaped logo read “Bank Americard” inside a white stripe with a blue stripe above and a yellow stripe below. The colors are thought to represent the blue skies and golden hills of California where the company was first established.

After being rebranded as Visa, the credit card company maintained a similar logo at first, just replacing the words, “Bank Americard” with, “Visa”. The company still maintains the blue, white, and yellow stripes in some of its branding but the logo simply says Visa in blue text with a bit of an extension of the “V” on the left side.

Canon’s original logo is starkly different from its modern one. The company, which was founded in 1934, used to be called Kwanon. “This title reflected the benevolence of Kwanon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, and embodied the Company's vision of creating the best cameras in the world. The logo included the word with an image of "Kwanon with 1,000 Arms" and flames,” says the company website.

By 1956, Canon had reached its final logo iteration with the only recent change being to the red color rather than solid black. The text remains the same, though.

Firefox was originally called Phoenix, so the logo was, unsurprisingly a red phoenix with flaming wings. The company was founded in 2002 which is when the first logo was also created.

After a trademark dispute, the company rebranded to become Mozilla Firefox. The logo now features a fox with a flaming tail wrapped around a blue orb which at one point in the logo’s history resembled Earth.

Lego is one of the most well loved children’s toy brands. Its original logo, from when the company was named in 1936, simply featured the word LEGO in black block font with serifs and white stripes within the lettering.

Lego’s current logo is much more representative of the fun of Lego. Its bright red square and white bubble letters rimmed in yellow really pop and draw customers in as it intended. The logo was first introduced in 1973 with a slight refinement in 1998 that tightened the letters.

The original shell logo was introduced in 1900, so one can hardly fault the design for its simplicity. Nowadays, it seems barely recognizable. It was a black and white mussel shell when it was first trademarked by the company but even the company website reveals that there are only theories as to why it changed from a mussel to a scallop.

Shell’s scallop shell logo underwent many subtle changes of its more than 100 year history. The signature red and yellow first appeared in the early part of the 20th century, but in 1992 the colors shifted to a warmer yellow and a deeper red. The company also released a sound logo, called “The Sound of Shell” in 2015.

Yahoo’s very first logo in 1994 featured a plain Times New Roman font in black. Things got a little more exciting in 1995 when the company introduced its iconic exclamation point along with some funky lettering that seemed to scream, “Yahoo!” The original color scheme was red and yellow with a black exclamation point. That logo was also short-lived, lasting less than a year.

Yahoo’s new branding consists of an updated logo featuring a purple, lowercase block font released in 2019. The slight forward angle of the exclamation point is meant to symbolize forward movement.

Since the beginning of Delta’s logo in 1929, the triangle shape, which stands for the greek letter delta has been used. The company began as Delta Air Service and its first logo featured the winged head of Mecury, the Roman god of travel and commerce. The logo went through several iterations before the company changed its name to Delta Airlines and adopted a logo with a triangle and wings.

Delta has maintained the triangle shape in its logo, but just about everything else has changed. The modern triangle, introduced in 2007, now looks like two three-dimensional red arrows pointing upwards, presumably towards the sky, with a capitalized DELTA in blue alongside it.

NASA has a lot to say about its original 1959 logo which was designed by a NASA employee, James Modarelli. “The design incorporates references to different aspects of the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The round shape of the insignia represents a planet. The stars represent space. The red v-shaped wing represents aeronautics. The circular orbit around the agency's name represents space travel,” says NASA’s website. Unofficially, the logo is often referred to as the “meatball.”

From 1975 to 1992, NASA’s logo became featured “NASA” in a sleek, red font with curving letters, unofficially known as the “worm.” In 1992, NASA brought back the “meatball” logo as its official insignia (though the worm did reappear in 2020).  NASA also has a more “dressed-up” version it uses for presentations and ceremonies. The logo looks extremely similar but the planets are more defined and the words National Aeronautics and Space Administration U.S.A. surrounds the seal.

3M began as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing and later changed to 3M. The first logo, from 1902 reflected the original company name as well its location, Duluth, Minn. in a circle around a black rhombus with 3 M Co. that read from both left to right and top to bottom.

Now the company sports a bright red logo with “3M” in large blocky font that was first introduced in 1978.

When Target was formed in 1962 along came its classic bullseye logo consisting of 3 concentric circles. It has adapted but remained largely the same ever since. Overlaid on the bullseye was the word “Target”.

Now Target’s bullseye has one red circle surrounding a solid red circle. Since 2006, because the brand’s name is so iconic, the company, like Starbucks, has taken away its company name in favor of just the symbol.

In 1907, Ford introduced the scripted typeface for his classic logo font that became the basis for all the following variations. It was designed by Ford engineer, Childe Harold Wills, using stencils. It wasn’t until 1927 when the Ford oval was first featured on a car, the 1927 Model A.

The modern day Ford logo uses the same font as the 1907 font but was updated in 2003 to celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary. It still has the longstanding oval around the font as well. In 2017, the logo reverted to a 2-D effect from the 3-D look used since 1976.