They even made sure to include the arrow in their Arabic translation (including having it point in an appropriate direction if you read right to left):
IMHO that is one of the main benefit of negative spaces (I didn't know the term but knew the technique): you actually hardly notice that there's "something else" and yet the logos somehow look nice. I'd say they look "soft", without knowing why.
Once you focus too much on "what's inside", it gets a bit confusing because you're seeing conflicting things (like the tree leave that is also people): but it's not a problem because it's not meant for people to really focus on.
And somehow it just works. I find several of these logos really very simple and great.
Now that this has been posted on HN I expect lots of startups to come up with similar logos ; )
Man, I just don't get design. The FedEx logo does nothing for me. The arrow doesn't really mean anything (an airplane would have been cool, given that their big differentiator was speed when they started).
But that this logo won 40 awards? (Note that I'm automatically assuming that the awards are meaningful.) I'm definitely someone who has to pay for design, because I just don't get it.
You need to think of the context of that logo, which was, what, 30 years ago? The arrow meant speed in a time when post (hell, pretty much everything) was slow. And visual jokes such as this were still pretty new. It's like saying The Beatles' 'She Loves You' is simple and obvious, yeah, it might seem like that now, but it sure as hell wasn't the case back then!
That article deserves a submission of its own! It's incredibly interesting and it touches something that most software developers value: simplicity and clarity. We're used to saying that naming things is the hardest problem in coding, and that matches completely with a philosophy of simplicity in design. A must read.
The FedEx logo is the first time I noticed the negative space technique and really sparked my interest in branding. It's amazing how such a simple mark can represent so much.
I haven't seen the Formula One logo mentioned, and that's definitely worth looking at if people aren't familiar with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One
The Carrefour logo is an excellent example. I only noticed the C a couple of years ago; i had lived 20 and something years thinking the logo was just a weird arrow. But once you see it, you can't unsee it hehe.
I don't think these are great examples. They are 'school' examples maybe, but some of these look amateurish
For example, the 4x (Fox) breaks the left-to-right convention, you can't identify it as such until you see it all. Some others haven't gotten the gist of the idea (forgot the word, sorry) and do things just because.
The article is meant to present the concept and provide inspiration for other artists; it's not a treatise on the history of the technique. I plan to update it as I find more clever examples.
I'd get tired of someof those, but the Locknet one is great. Very good. Almost alarmingly simple execution, and conveys the sense of locking something. And authority. Big subtle message.
It is far too subtle for me. It lacks the call for curiosity, because the simplicity is just too well executed. Could have been made a tad more obvious, or more puzzling, at the cost of losing some of the simplicity.
What is especially clever about the logo is the use of a serif L and nesting the sans-serif N inside of it. The juxtaposition is wonderful, and makes the N that slight bit more subtle.
I recall reading a post or pdf from a few years ago that reviewed 30 or more years of logos? It was a great collection of hundreds of logos. Does anyone have a link to that?
When I was a kid in art class the canonical example was the old Hartford Whalers logo, which had a negative-space 'H' between the 'W' and the tail fluke.
I had the same thought as I went back to append the names of the artists in the collection. I have seen lots of great logos designed by women as I've scoured Dribbble, just not so many using the negative space technique. What does that say? Maybe men and women perceive design differently? This would be an interesting topic to explore.
