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The logo of large companies such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon is the distinctive mark of the respective company and is known worldwide. Nowadays, most logos are minimalist in design, but that wasn’t always the case.
Microsoft: The old Windows logo
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They also designed the first logo.
- It was a lettering in a sans-serif font made of several lines.
- At that time, Micro-Soft was still hyphenated.
- In 2012, there was another rebranding.
- The font of the company name was changed and a symbol was added to the logo. It consists of 4 squares in different colours, which are also arranged in a square.
The development of the Google logo
- In 1998, Google’s search engine was established and with it a new logo, which already has similarities to Google’s subsequent lettering.
- The letters of the lettering were designed in several colours and were given a shadow.
- The familiar “Google colours” of blue, red, yellow and green have been present in the company’s logo since 1999. So far, only the fonts have been minimally changed.
The Amazon logo at different times
Jeffrey Bezos came up with the idea for Amazon in 1994. But in the beginning, his company was called: “Cadabra”. After initial difficulties, it was relatively quickly changed to the name we know today.
- The first Amazon logo was a design in blue tones and in water optics, which was relatively difficult to recognise. The “A” was integrated, but not very much in focus. It was meant to be reminiscent of the Amazon River, the company’s namesake.
- In 1998, the logo was introduced that we still know today in a slightly modified form: A black lettering with an orange underline.
- 2000 it was still slightly adapted: The font became thicker and the underscore became an arrow that looks like a smile and goes from A to Z. On packaging, sometimes only the smiling arrow in black is used, also to save costs.
