Pop quiz: can you identify these iconic companies by their typefaces alone? Italian graphic designer Emanuele Abrate decided to run an experiment of sorts and trade names for fonts. In his renderings, iconic (non-text) elements sometimes give the brand away, but even without those the color scheme and type can provide clues.
Called simply Logofonts, it spans famous commercial brands including Nike, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook Twitter, Adobe and AirBNB.
Abrate is an art director focused on identity design, and decided to see what he could learn by reverse-engineering these classic graphics.
Perhaps not surprising upon reflection, but most of these major companies use relatively obscure fonts — even if they look a bit like familiar ones, they are a bit more unique than one might guess at a glance.