Create a logo using Gestalt Principles

Look at the following logo and consider the shape, form, simplicity of design and the way it communicates.

Unilevers logo is quite simple, but also a bit complex. The logo is shaped like the letter “U” which is the first letter in their comany’s name. Although it’s not a “U” in the sence that it’s a type or font, but several shapes/symbols has been put together to form a “U”. The symbols in the logo which creates the letter, is based on their products and values. Their logo includes 25 icons, each of which represents something important to Unilever. From a lock of hair symbolising their shampoo brands to a spoon, an ice cream, a jar, a tea leaf, a hand and much more, the little icons all have a meaning.

In your own words explain what you consider the different Gestalt principles in this logo to be. Describe the logo and justify your answers.

In this logo we can see several gestalt principles I think. When you arrange object together to create a whole, it’s called proximity. That is propably the first gestalt principle that came to my mind and I saw. But I think you can see some other principles as well, in form of closure and symmetry. The letter “U” is symmetric it self, so I guess you can say it contains the gestalt principle symmetry. It is equal on both sides. And for closure, the “U” isn’t filled up with one color, but our eye fills the gap beetwen the symbols, and see an “U”. So you can say that this logo can be explained with three gestalt principles. Although I think proximity is the most obvious one.

Pick any 3 Gestalt principles and recreate 3 versions of the logo according to your chosen principle. Be creative and innovative with how you do it. Sketch, plan, and do it by hand before digitally creating your favourite option in a vector format.

So my first logo is a closure logo. I wanted to present some of their products in the logo, without having to present them all, allthough I think I present many of them in these few symbols, wich forms the letters as well.

My second logo is based on the gestalt principle continuation. Maybe you can see som closure as well here, in the logo itself, where the white area forms kind of an “U”, but I mainly focused on the one we can se. It is created beacause of their concern for the environment, so the blue presents clean water, the brown presents the earth and the leafs presents the rainforest.

My third logo is a symmetry logo. Unilever has commited themselfs to prevent damaging of the rainforest, by using substainable palm oil in their products. That’s why I thought a symmetry logo that represented the rainforest would be a good idea.

Your entire process, including sketches and research, need to be loaded on your blog as part of this learning activity.

So when I first saw the logo I couldn’t recognize it. I didn’t know what Company this was, so in order to make a logo I had to do some Research. I found out that Unilever was really big in their industy. Unilever is a British-Dutch transnationalconsumer goods company co-headquartered in London and Rotterdam. Its products include food and beverages , cleaning agents, beauty products, and personal care products. It is Europe’s seventh most valuable Company. I visited their homepage and I found out that they were concerned about Our environment, so when I started thinking about logos I had that in my mind.

A caring Company in my mind I thought about hearts, People (symbolized) holding each other, the Rainforest, black and white (not everything is black and white) and also industry, because that’s what it was. I read about their Products and thought about how I could get them inside a logo, without having them all presented. So you have already seen mye logos in finish format, below you can see some of my sketches.

Sources:

wikipedia.com

unilever.com