From the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you fall asleep, you're bombarded
with thousands of logos.
Most of us don't think twice about all the corporate logos we see every day, but look
again.
There just might be something extra hidden beneath the surface.
Here are some famous logos with hidden meanings behind them.
Subaru
The cluster of stars in the Subaru logo makes perfect sense...if you speak Japanese.
They represent 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 Subaru Corporation — formerly Fuji Heavy Industries
— and the five smaller stars are for the five companies that merged to form Fuji Heavy
Industries in the 1950s.
In 2003, Fuji took the Subaru logo as their main corporate logo, since they've clearly
always been proud of their cars.
"The little Subaru is cheap and ugly, but it goes anywhere the big cars go."
Domino's
Domino's has come a long way over the years.
After dropping out of college twice because he couldn't afford tuition, Tom Monaghan borrowed
$900 to buy a tiny pizza place called DomiNick's in Michigan in 1960.
Five years later, he bought two more locations.
But the former owner of DomiNick's refused Monaghan the right to use his name for the
new restaurants, so a delivery driver suggested the name Domino's.
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 the logo website Logaster, Monaghan planned to add another dot to the domino in
the logo after every new location opened up.
It's a good thing he didn't, since as of 2013, the company has about 12,000 locations worldwide.
That's a lot of dots.
Amazon
If there's one website that you take for granted, it's Amazon.
Amazon is the only place where you can purchase 50 pounds of dog food, a pair of wireless
headphones, and a pillowcase with a picture of Nicolas Cage, shirtless, on it all at once,
and have it all delivered to your house in two days or less.
Amazon sells just about everything, and their logo subtly reflects that.
At the dawn of the new millennium, Amazon unveiled the logo that they continue to use
today.
It may look like a smile, as in, "I'm happy I don't have to leave my house ever again
to buy socks or toilet paper!"
But the curved line under the Amazon logo is actually an arrow that starts at the "a"
and points to "z," meaning they sell everything — from A-to-Z.
Tostitos
A party isn't a party without tortilla chips and salsa so it's no surprise that Tostitos
wanted to embrace that identity with a hidden image in their logo.
If you look closely at the "T", "I", and second "T" in the word "Tostitos," it shows two people
sharing a single chip and dipping it in a bowl of red salsa.
According to a 2013 press release, the logo and packaging is meant to illustrate "the
look and feel of a 'party in the bag.'"
And if you happen to find yourself in the bag after a party, Tostito's got your back
there, too.
Just before the 2017 Super Bowl, the brand launched a bag that detects if you've been
consuming alcohol and gives you the option to call an Uber if you had too much to drink.
Good lookin' out, bag!
United States Cyber Command
The United States Cyber Command has the important job of protecting the country's military networks
from cyber attacks.
As an institution that deals mainly in cryptic codes, it's no surprise that even their logo
hides a secret message.
In fact, it took a professional technology security expert to break the code.
In 2010, Computer World magazine reported that threat researcher and antivirus techie
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."
Which...still explains absolutely nothing.
"Someone spent a lot of time on this anti-hacking software.
I'm going to have to go into hardcore hacking mode."
And in case you were wondering, the top secret code is just the Cyber Command's mission statement.
Mercedes-Benz
When it comes to symbols of luxury, the simple three-pointed star of a Mercedes-Benz carries
a lot of street cred.
But the Mercedes-Benz logo didn't start off as a logo at all.
According to the auto-site, The News Wheel, the design comes from a postcard that automotive
pioneer Gottlieb Daimler sent 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, leaving just the three points in the star, which represent
their "domination at land, sea, and air."
It makes total sense now why there are more Mercedes-Benz Decepticons than Autobots.
Unilever
Unilever is one of those consumer goods companies that practically runs the world.
They own more than 400 brands that are sold in nearly 200 countries.
Go ahead, get a can of Axe body spray and flip it around.
Grab a jar of mayonnaise, or some dishwasher soap.
Yup, that's the Unilever logo.
But what are all of those little pictures 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 how a bee represents "the community spirit
of our people and our commitment to find innovative ways of working to reduce our environmental
footprint."
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.
"Pick any of our thirty-ONEderful flavors and don't forget the nuts!"
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, you can see
the 31 hidden right in the middle, proving once again that Baskin-Robbins is always a
step ahead of you.
"You found out."
"Baskin-Robbins always finds out."
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