Long, Lost Logo Lookalikes

As more and more companies are becoming popular, more logos are being designed in the process. This has lead to some strangely-similar logo designs.

Similar looking logos have been spotted from the book “The Alphabet in Design: Trademarks and Symbols of the World” (published in the late 1980s) and gained popularity through social media such as Reddit and Twitter.

Beats / Stadt Brühl

Also found in the book of world logos, this Stadt Brühl logo that looks like the twin of a popular music brand. This Stadt Brühl logo was created in 1971, but the Beats logo wasn’t published until 37 years later in 2008. However, the famous Beats icon is designed to also look like headphones – as they sell audio related products. So despite the fact that the symbols are scarily similar, it may have been done under innocent intentions.

The Beats ‘scandal’ from the 80’s logo book has caused some rivalry online between some Reddit users. This interesting find on the social media has led to many responses – this is just one of them by Spencer Chen and a Reddit user. “The logo is literally just the letter b, from the Typeface Bauhaus, inside a circle. any number of designers could have all independently come up with this as a logo design.” ­­­­­

AirBnB / Azuma Drive-In

Additionally, in an attempt to rebrand, the new AirBnB logo looks awkwardly identical to this Azuma Drive-In logo which was also found in the same book. Although, they are different colours and heights, there’s no hiding that the shape is almost a replica.

Frisol / Flipboard

Another logo found in the book were these boxes stacked on top of one another for the company of Frisol –  a cycling team in 1981, it has also been noticed that this logo seems almost identical to the social network Flipboard.

Ford / Carrier

Both written in italics, the same white border and letters and a similar blue oval, it’s astonishing that Ford’s and Carrier’s logos have so much in common. It is unclear who copied who in this situation as both companies were found in the early 1900s, but neither had acquired their current logo until years after they were founded.

Bentley / Mini

Furthermore, the theme of ‘silver wings’ for logos has definitely been overused and that is no exception between these car brands. The only real difference between Bentley and Mini is the detail in the wings. Plus, with Mini being found 40 years later and both companies being in the same industry, it is hard for both companies to have not noticed this mistake. 

Ubuntu / Human Rights First

Check out this OS platform for apple (Ubuntu [left]) and human rights organisation (Human Rights First [right]). Completely separate industries and markets but still seem closely related in their designs with their 2D Torus shapes conjoined with smaller circles. However, just like the Beats situation, Human Rights First have designed their logo to look like 4 people ‘holding hands’ with one another to symbolise harmony
– just as their organisation wants to achieve.

FDA / CNN

Not only do the letters have a white strip running through the centre, but between CNN and FDA, we can see that the letters are joined with one another as if to seem like one image. SEGA – the gaming company- could work well here also, but the letters are separate instead of joined.

Some companies have designed their logos around what they provide with the intentions of an original design, only to realise that it already exists. Of course, there are a limited amount of shapes and letter combinations for logos, but some (shown above) are so eerily similar, it’s hard to believe that some of these were accidents.