Big names ahead

Once you see it, you’ll never unsee it: 12 brand logos’ hidden messages

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A good logo has to communicate what the brand it represents is all about. It should do so in the simplest and most elegant way possible, conveying the brand’s spirit and core concept. The following 12 famous brands have managed to create iconic logos that not only represent them successfully but also include a subtle, partially hidden message. Did you know about any of these?

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The name of the French supermarket chain means "intersection" in its native language. This meaning is clearly reflected in its logo, with its two arrows pointing in opposite directions. Additionally, hidden in the space between the arrows you can see the shape of the letter "C."

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Amazon’s logo has a ubiquitous online presence. It’s simple, and it has been streamlined over the years. If you’ve ever wondered what the arrow beneath the logo means, take a look at its starting and ending points: it goes from A to Z.

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The name Cisco comes from the common abbreviation of San Francisco, its hometown. The logo portrays the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, arranged in a shape that also suggests a sound wave.

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Why does Apple’s logo have a bite mark on it? The reason is practical: if there was no bite mark, the smaller versions of the logo—used on a variety of gadgets including the iPhone—might look like a cherry.

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The FedEx logo looks quite normal, but it hides a small detail, overlooked by most: between the second "E" and the "x," the negative space forms a small arrow pointing forward, symbolizing speed and precision.

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The triangular Swiss chocolate Toblerone uses the Matterhorn—one of Switzerland’s most iconic mountains—as its logo. But, if you look closely, inside the mountain you can spot the shape of a bear, which is the official symbol of the Swiss town of Bern, the original home of Toblerone.

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If you’ve ever wondered what the red logo of the Levi’s brand means, then you should take a look at the stitching on the back pocket of any pair of their jeans—the shape matches perfectly.

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If you take a closer look at the neckline of the redheaded girl in the Wendy’s logo, you’ll notice that her shirt collar subtly spells out the word "mom." This detail is meant to evoke the feeling of home-cooked meals, just like something made by your mom.

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The NBC logo is formed by the colors of the rainbow, which represent the colors of modern television. But at the center, you can see the shape of a peacock, with its beak pointing to the right. The colorful shapes around it represent the bird’s spread feathers.

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While some people suggest that the two-colored BMB circle represents a propeller, based on the airplane manufacturing history of the brand, the truth points elsewhere. The blue and white segments actually represent the flag of Bavaria, the region where the company originated.

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The world’s largest chain of ice cream shops, Baskin-Robbins, is best known for offering 31 flavors of ice cream. Its logo cleverly features the number "31" highlighted in pink, hidden within the center of the design.

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The stylized logo and lettermark of the electric car brand Tesla is designed to resemble the cross-section of an electric motor. Or, at least, a meaningful part of it.

Memorable but cryptic

What is "gravity's rainbow", anyway? Dissecting famous book titles

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Titles are our first introduction to books. From what we gather on the cover, we expect to get a glimpse of the journey the writer will take us on. But have you ever finished reading a book and still not known why it was titled that way? While some authors include passages that explain their chosen titles, others prefer to preserve the mystery or leave room for interpretation. Let’s decode some catchy yet enigmatic book titles!

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Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns penned Comin’ Thro’ the Rye, the text that Holden Caulfield misquotes in the book written by J.D. Salinger, and which gives the novel its title.

In a fantasy, Holden imagines himself standing in a field of rye, catching children who are playing near the edge of a cliff before they fall into the abyss—just as he longs to protect them from the hardships of growing up. Previous short stories by the author featuring Holden had been named Slight Rebellion off Madison and I’m Crazy.

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Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is known by an alternative title in some countries: **Fiesta**—a clear nod to the novel’s Spanish setting and the celebratory atmosphere of the bull runs.

However, on second thought, the author decided to change the title to shine the spotlight on the novel’s exploration of morality. He ultimately chose The Sun Also Rises, drawing inspiration from the Bible—specifically, a passage from Ecclesiastes: "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose."

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A captivating title that sets us up for a nostalgic—and lengthy—book. Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece almost had a far less poetic title: The House. Thankfully, he reconsidered and chose One Hundred Years of Solitude.

This multigenerational family saga is marked by characters who experience isolation—both from the world and each other. Fun fact: Márquez reportedly struggled with the title until the phrase came to him in a moment of inspiration while driving.

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Robert Burns did it again! This time Robert Burns’ poem To a Mouse was the inspiration for Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men which includes the famous line: "The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry."

Since the novel explores themes of shattered dreams and fragile plans, Steinbeck’s choice was both poignant and literary. Interestingly, he almost titled it **Something That Happened**—a name so vague it could apply to nearly any book!

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This title is one of the most intriguing on the list—reminiscent of a modern essay or a TED Talk. Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic is thought-provoking from the very start. Published in the late ’60s, it was ahead of its time in exploring artificial intelligence and what it means to be human versus machine.

The Electric Toad was one alternative title the author considered. And in case you didn’t know, this book was indeed adapted for the big screen—under a much sleeker name: Blade Runner.

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Cormac McCarthy didn’t originally plan to write a novel at all—it started as a screenplay! But the title was set from the beginning.

The story, centered on Sheriff Bell and his sense of displacement in a violent world, takes its name from the opening line of W.B. Yeats’s poem Sailing to Byzantium: "That is no country for old men."

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Did you know that Faulkner’s famous work could have easily been mistaken for a vampire fantasy romance novel? He originally considered naming it Twilight instead of The Sound and the Fury.

Thankfully, he opted for a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The title reflects the chaotic narrative of the Compson family’s decline, as well as the futility of their struggles.

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It was going to be called **The Harvest Gypsies**—not quite grand enough for what would become John Steinbeck’s celebrated novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

It was his wife, Carol, who suggested the final title, inspired by Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, which includes the line, "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." The phrase perfectly encapsulated the novel’s themes of suffering, resilience, and the fight for dignity during the Great Depression.

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Offred was the original title Margaret Atwood had for her novel—a fitting choice, as it’s the name of the narrator and protagonist. However, she ultimately changed it in a nod to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, where each story is told from a different character’s perspective.

In this dystopian novel, it is Offred, a repressed woman forced into childbearing, who tells the story.

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Toni Morrison’s Beloved almost had a completely different title: The Six-Minute Gap. This referred to the time it took for the schoolteacher to arrive and stop Sethe from killing her children—a pivotal moment in the novel.

Morrison cleverly shifted to Beloved, the name of an important character, but also a haunting and mocking title to tell the story of a mother tortured by her past decisions.

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Gravity's Rainbow and **Mindless Pleasures**—neither title reveals much about the story, yet both were considered by Thomas Pynchon for his novel.

The final title may sound poetic or philosophical, which could be intentional. But, strictly speaking, it has a concrete meaning: it refers to the arc of a V-2 rocket’s flight—a parabola shaped like a rainbow, the consequence of gravity. This trajectory serves as a central symbol in the book.

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Joseph Heller coined the term Catch-22 to describe a nonsensical bureaucratic rule that torments the main character in his novel. The phrase resonated so strongly with readers that it became synonymous with paradoxical dilemmas.

Originally, Heller planned to title his book Catch-18, but editors urged him to change it to avoid confusion with Mila 18, another novel. He briefly considered Catch-11 and Catch-14 before finally settling on _Catch-22_—a choice that would make literary history.

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Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children originally had a slightly different working title: Children of Midnight. The term refers to children born at the precise moment of India’s independence, who, in this magical realism novel, possess extraordinary powers.

Rushdie has said the title came to him early and stuck—fortunately so, as Children of Midnight sounds more like a spooky bedtime story than a sweeping epic about identity and destiny.