Logolysis of General Electric (GE)

A great company founded by a great inventor! Thomas Alva Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878 to manufacture and sell his new invention - incandescent electric lamp. Later Edison combined all his businesses under Edison General Electric Company that merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 to form the General Electric Company.

GE’s logo has changed little since inception. The original logo was designed almost 100 years ago. Actually, it was just a badge for the center of one of the first electric fans. You can see this in the first of it’s kind GE logo. The fans were lost in the history but the swirly logo remains the same although it has gone thorough minor revisions over the time.

A time-line of GE logos is displayed below:

 
Current logo was adopted in 2004 when GE also changed its corporate color to blue which represents intelligence, stability, unity, and conservatism. The new logo was designed by Wolff Olins. GE also adopted a new slogan, “imagination at work” replacing the longtime slogan “we bring good things to life”. GE's logo shows a subtle movement (swirly) and this is a very fine point to be noticed that represents dynamism and forward looking.

The new GE brand system was officially launched in January 2005. GE believes that in the 21st century, its image should reflect the brand’s attributes and characters such as trustworthy, leading, dependable, contemporary, global, innovative, dynamic and approachable. It also best represents GE’s focus on imagination, innovation and the determination to maintain its century-old tradition of continuously bringing high-technology products and services to the market. 

The most remarkable transformation was the change of the black and white GE logo into a variety of 14 colors. The Pantone7455 blue replaced black to be the most common color used in the logo. The new brand system clearly defines the brand architecture, logo, tag-line lock-up, typography and colors as well as providing the instructions for ads, stationary, gifts and print productions.

GE's logo will always remind us of a trustworthy, an approachable and a global company that is committed to imagination, innovation and century-old tradition of bringing quality products to the people. The classic logo will remain contemporary for the years to come by having some minor but thorough change.

GE's logo will be a stamp of trust, tradition, innovation, imagination, quality and so on...