What's in a logo?

In 1917 British cans of motor oil that were being sold under the name, “Palm Tree Oil”, began being marketed as “BP”, or “British Petroleum”. The company wouldn’t be renamed BP for another 40 years, but the letters began appearing on the sides of delivery trucks and on pumps in the twenties. The first logo was created in 1920, by a BP employee, which consisted of a shield surrounding the letters “BP”, with small wings surrounding the letters inside the shield. The colors were originally red, blue, or white, but the colors on the delivery trucks and pumps were changed to green after complaints from local business owners who claimed the colors “stood out too much” in the more rural areas.

            The shield logo would stay the logo for another 80 years until the year 2000, when the new logo and mission statement was unveiled. The new logo would contain a sunburst of green, yellow, and white symbolizing dynamic energy in all its forms. The logo was called the “Helios”, after the ancient Greek sun god. Also unveiled was the new mission statement, “Better People, Better Products, Big Picture, Beyond Petroleum”.

            The current BP Company has five standard values that they expect all of their employees to abide by; Safety, Respect, Excellence, Courage, and the “One Team” attitude. Also, the warm colors in the company logo not only show the company’s respect for the environment, but also promote a “family environment”. Now, can a company that was responsible for the largest oil spill in history really claim safety is their first priority? Maybe, but the “Deepwater Horizon” oil spill that occurred on April 20^th, 2010, killed 11 BP employees and injured 17 more. This alone does not condemn them as a company, but in 2010 there were 14 work-related deaths (3 if you don’t include the spill) and 18 more in 2009. Despite these numbers, BP has actually been a relatively safe oil company compared to their competition. BP had a recordable injury frequency (injuries per 200,000 work hours), or RIF, of about 44.4, while ExxonMobil had an RIF of about 55. Now, both of these are below the benchmark standard for the RIF, but injuries and deaths are still occurring at too high of a rate in my opinion. It seems like the “Big Picture” for BP is making money, and as long as they maintain a standard that is acceptable by government standards that most likely will not change.

What Font Are You?

After taking the “Helvetica” quiz, I was assigned the courier font to describe my personality. When taking the quiz I answered most of the questions truthfully, but I also found a few of the answers to be too funny not to choose, so instead of going with the answer that may have best described me, I chose the one that made me laugh. Now, I don’t think this is too far off-base, because I consider my sense of humor to be my strongest characteristic, but the explanation of my font revealed a slightly different personality trait. This type of font described me as someone who “proudly goes against the grain”, and is “not afraid to let your opinions be known”, and that I “would rather be known as anything but “conventional”. Although these traits are not exactly what I was attempting to convey through the quiz, they are traits that I definitely believe describe me.

After seeing what the courier font looks like, I have to say I was slightly disappointed, and I don’t believe the quiz accurately described this type of font. The font to me seemed very simple, and it was very conventional. According to McCloud, we attach meaning to most visual stimuli based on what kind of text it is associated with, and how that text is presented. For example, there is a four panel comic strip in the book that shows a woman cooking in the kitchen. There are only two different words used in this strip, “chop” and “tik”, and both are used in different ways to help the reader understand the sound and movement occurring in the comic. The word “chop” is presented with bold, large lettering and with an exclamation point at the end, “CHOP!” This text is used in the panel where the woman is cutting a large carrot with a large knife, and the text, along with the visual, lets the reader know that there is a loud sound and a forceful motion occurring. The word “tik” is much smaller in size, its lettering is much thinner, “tiktiktiktik…”, and is associated with a picture of a quietly ticking oven timer.

The way my font was described to me after the quiz put a completely different visual in my head than what the font actually looked like, which goes to show that people apply different meanings to things based on how they are described, as opposed to something being described that has a similar visual representation accompanying it. Things that may seem out of the ordinary to some people may convey a different message to others, especially when there is not a visual representation of what is being described.

ABCDEF 123456 (This is an example of courier font)