trillianjedi - 1:19 pm on Jul 14, 2003 (gmt 0)

Limbo, whilst I respect your opinion and you may well be right, I personally think that you're reading a little too much into it. I think it was literally scribbled on the back of a piece of toilet paper without a great deal of thought.

The "Virgin" brand was established through publicity and public recognition, before that it didn't signify anything to anyone. Subconciously or otherwise.

It doesn't even need to be in logo form. If I just put Virgin like that with a capital "V" in straight text in the middle of a sentence everyone immediately know's the company I'm talking about.

I agree in design principles that a logo or any form of graphic should visually represent the target of the company or business or website where possible. That is a fundamental element of design (the form follows function philosophy). However, I would say that with good publicity and recognition, a logo can actually be anything and given time will become a world-recognised symbol representational of the company that uses it.

Blogger.com's logo is representative of that, as is the Coca-Cola logo with it's distinctive typeface. The Coca-Cola bottle however, has become as much of a logo representing it's owner as the original text logo. That was not deliberate, that's just brand recognition and indicative of the fact that we associate images with organisations in accordance with that recognition, not in accordance, necessarily, with their design.

TJ