Over the years, people have pointed out that previously intricate and detailed company logos have become much simpler, with fewer colors and rounded corners. Many people have a problem with this trend because they argue it makes logos too boring. However, while simple logos may be less stimulating, they are overall much easier to recognize and remember than unnecessarily complicated logos.
When graphic designers create logos, they have two main goals. The first is to make sure the logo can be easily resized. A complex logo could be spotted easily on a truck or on a building, but it would be hard to recognize on a shirt or a sticker. The use of few colors and rounded corners guarantees that the logo will work in any size. The second goal is to make the logo meaningful. The most iconic logos usually consist of a few shapes or symbols which represent the company name or what the company does. Some logos are on the nose, like Target, Shell, Dove, and Apple, but some have a deeper meaning, such as the FedEx logo with a hidden arrow in the negative space, or the Goodwill logo, in which a lowercase g doubles as a smiling face. The beauty of these is that when you first see the hidden meaning, it blows your mind and you never forget that logo. For these reasons, simple logos are able to withstand the test of time, so complicated logos naturally become simpler.
This is not merely a trend and has been happening since logos were first used. It may seem like logos have only become simpler in the past few years, but that is only because companies tend to go with more detailed logos when they first start out and then simplify them later on. Simple and meaningful logos have always outlasted needlessly complicated logos. The NBC peacock-shaped logo, for example, is over 70 years old, and yet it expertly displays the company’s use of color television using only six shapes and a beak formed from negative space.
Overall, complicated logos may have more to look at, but logos which can convey the same thing with just a few elements are much more impactful.