Can You Draw the Starbucks Logo Without Cheating? Probably Not.
- 6 years ago
Can You Draw the Starbucks Logo Without Cheating? Probably Not.
But they rarely critique it or study it enough to reproduce fine details — a phenomenon
that psychologists like Dr. Castel call “inattentional amnesia.” When something is seen frequently, the information ends up being more easily ignored or forgotten.
“We know it’s red, but the more subtle features — the exact shape of it, whether there’s a white border
around it — these are things we often miss, even though we’ve seen it millions of times,” he said
A study conducted in 2014 by psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles
similarly asked 85 participants if they could draw the familiar Apple logo from memory.
Dr. Alan Castel, a psychology professor who was one of the authors of the study, said
that the inability to accurately recall such daily ephemera as a brand logo really might be a beneficial quirk of our memory system.
When 156 people were recently asked if they could draw some of the world’s most iconic
brand logos from memory, some of their recreations were laughably off the mark.
“We just wanted to know — does it work?”
The answer is that being able to recognize a logo and being able to recreate it appear to be vastly different things.
Paul Stafford, co-founder of DesignStudio, the agency
that led the rebranding effort, said that Airbnb envisioned people renting out their homes and putting their own spin on the Bélo — on everything from magazines to bathrobes and shampoo bottles, like a hotel.
But they rarely critique it or study it enough to reproduce fine details — a phenomenon
that psychologists like Dr. Castel call “inattentional amnesia.” When something is seen frequently, the information ends up being more easily ignored or forgotten.
“We know it’s red, but the more subtle features — the exact shape of it, whether there’s a white border
around it — these are things we often miss, even though we’ve seen it millions of times,” he said
A study conducted in 2014 by psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles
similarly asked 85 participants if they could draw the familiar Apple logo from memory.
Dr. Alan Castel, a psychology professor who was one of the authors of the study, said
that the inability to accurately recall such daily ephemera as a brand logo really might be a beneficial quirk of our memory system.
When 156 people were recently asked if they could draw some of the world’s most iconic
brand logos from memory, some of their recreations were laughably off the mark.
“We just wanted to know — does it work?”
The answer is that being able to recognize a logo and being able to recreate it appear to be vastly different things.
Paul Stafford, co-founder of DesignStudio, the agency
that led the rebranding effort, said that Airbnb envisioned people renting out their homes and putting their own spin on the Bélo — on everything from magazines to bathrobes and shampoo bottles, like a hotel.