Nike can put their trademarked swoosh alone on a blank page and people will know what it refers to. When a simple symbol becomes tied to your company so well that words aren't needed, that's branding success. One may argue that the Nazi swastika is the best-known branding symbol in the world. When you see one displayed, that tells you more than a thousand words could. So it's a bit jarring to see artworks and photographs that are more than a hundred years old with a swastika displayed proudly. But then you have to remember, that was before the Nazis ruined the swastika.
The swastika is a symbol that goes back thousands of years, and was used all over the world. It's a bit of graphic design that is simple and clever at the same time. It lends itself well to tiling and was often used in fancy borders on ancient artifacts. It was a symbol of good fortune. So how did the Nazis adopt it for their philosophy of racial superiority? That had to do with the German archaeologist who discovered the ancient city of Troy and made the symbol famous around the world. Read how the ancient swastika was associated with the mythical Aryan race and became Adolf Hitler's brand at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: Brycesteiner)
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