Starbucks

Starbucks is an American coffee house company based in Seattle, Washington but has become the biggest coffee company in the world, with over 20,000 stores in 62 countries. It was founded in Seattle in 1971, which was when they came up with their first logo. The founders of Starbucks wanted the logo to capture Seattles connection with seaports and the seafaring history of coffee. They found a 16th century woodcut of a Norse Siren or mermaid with two tails and based the Starbucks logo around her.

The Starbucks logo has changed many times over the years. In the earliest version of the logo, the logo was brown with the words “Starbucks” “coffee” “tea” “spices” around it, and the Sirens two tails were completely visible. That version of the logo was used from 1971 to 1987. Another logo that was started in 1992 is green around the edge instead of brown and only has the words “Starbucks” “coffee” on it. The Siren is in black and white and the tails aren’t as obviously mermaid tails. Its almost as if Starbucks wanted to get a little bit farther away from the nautical theme. And they might have wanted to focus more on selling coffee. That logo was used until 2011 until Starbucks switched to the logo that is used today. 

The logo today is just the Siren in green and white, and is enlarged because there is no circle or words around the image. The fish tails are still barely visible and its possible someone wouldn’t even know that they are fishtails just by looking at it. The logo was changed to take out the words because Starbucks didn’t want the brand logo to be just known for coffee.

The only other time the logo was changed was in 1987 before the logo in 1992. And the only difference was that the Siren was even farther back that in the 1992 version. The Starbucks logo has stayed mostly the same since 1971, mostly only changing how close up or far away the Siren appears in the logo, or taking out words from the logo.