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About the logo

In case you’re won­der­ing: what does that incom­plete cir­cle has to do with minus­five? And if you haven’t fig­ured it out by look­ing at the pic­ture in this arti­cle (or if you’re read­ing it using a text-only syn­di­ca­tion, browser, device, etc.), it resem­bles the tra­jec­tory of the minute-marker of a clock, reach­ing the minute 55, a.k.a. ‘minus-five to the hour’.

Even though that’s the main mean­ing of the sym­bol, though it has many oth­ers attached, each one adding up to the sev­eral rea­sons why I felt this was the per­fect shape to rep­re­sent minus­five. Among oth­ers, these two are the ones I find most important:

Since it’s formed by a sin­gle line, it means it can only be the tra­jec­tory of one of the two main clock mark­ers (hours and min­utes); and since, as I explained before, the one I’m refer­ring to is the minute-marker, we’re left with no hour marker. Since there is no hour on this clock, then the hour equals zero. 0 — 5 = –5 (minus­five); this strength­ens the intended iden­tity of the sym­bol. Also,

Based on the prin­ci­ple that the human mind tends to focus more on what­ever is miss­ing rather than any­thing else in an image, I intend to make the viewer focus on the miss­ing twelfth piece of the cir­cle and ask him/her-self “what, or why is that miss­ing?” So the pur­pose is to cre­ate interest.

But at the end what makes this symbol/logo most beau­ti­ful to me is its sim­plic­ity, show­ing how, through a sim­ple line, one can rep­re­sent inter­est­ingly com­plex meaning.

Would you con­sider this logo a min­i­mal­ist design? Tell me what you think.

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Posted in: Graphic Design.

  • Stephan Krowin­ski

    The fact that you had to explain what the logo is defeats the entire point of logo design. Let the user fig­ure it out for them­selves, and, if it’s too hard for the user to fig­ure out, then you have to ask your­self if it’s a good enough design. For the record, I really like your logo, just don’t see why you felt the need to explain why it is the way it is. : )

  • http://www.minusfive.com minus­five

    I really appre­ci­ate your com­ment Stephan; I think you make a fair point. The fact of the mat­ter is that I didn’t write the arti­cle because I “felt the need” to explain the mean­ing of the logo. In fact, I just needed to add some con­tent to my site so I could test some fea­tures of the Word­Press theme I cre­ated for it, and play around with fonts, graph­ics, col­ors, etc. But I’ve got to tell you, after I wrote it, I’ve received an unex­pected reac­tion from peo­ple who read it and are close to me, who are usu­ally not inter­ested in design; they’ve been pay­ing more atten­tion to logos every­where, try­ing to find the mean­ing behind them. I think that’s pretty cool! If I can spread the inter­est I feel for design, to peo­ple who have never felt it, by writ­ing an arti­cle that, as you say, defeats the pur­pose of the design itself, so be it. Besides, you’ll find arti­cles every­where from great design­ers explain­ing what inspired their designs and the mean­ing behind them. I don’t think there’s any­thing wrong in giv­ing some value to your own designs and show­cas­ing them in your own site. I plan to con­tinue writ­ing arti­cles about the parts of the site’s design that I feel deserve one.

    If you’re a logo designer your­self, you prob­a­bly see thou­sands of awe­some designs every day. Each one of those is a piece of art, with its own beauty and mean­ing. How­ever, thou­sands of peo­ple see each one of those logos every day and that’s all they see: a logo. No beauty. No meaning.

    Also, even though my web­site is focused in design, I don’t plan to pur­posely nar­row its audi­ence to design con­scious people.

    Once again, thanks for read­ing my arti­cle Stephan, and tak­ing the time to com­ment on it. You’re wel­come to do so again at any time.

  • Ann

    I really appre­ci­ate the expla­na­tion. I find it very inter­est­ing to read about the gen­e­sis of design. I don’t know much about it at all and spend a lot of time won­der­ing how in the world some­one came up with their logo. So yay! Thanks!