The power of symbols

Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t.

My daughter pointed it as we passed a FedEx truck on the motorway.

Once I’d spotted it, I couldn’t un-see it.

I’m now waiting for the opportunity to smugly draw it to the attention of some other FedEx arrow virgin.

Lindon Leader, the graphic designer who created the logo for the express delivery firm in 1994, said the symbol was left understated intentionally. Its power, he said, lay in the fact that it was a ‘hidden bonus’ – either you saw it or you didn’t and the arrow symbolised precision and speed subliminally mirrored FedEx’s brand attributes.

“Punchlines that need to be explained are neither funny nor memorable,” he said.

In the brash and pushy world of advertising, it’s a brave designer who sweats for hours over his creation and then doesn’t unveil it to the world.

Man has long understood the power of symbols. They have been exploited since time began by the powerful, mighty and corrupt.

Ever sent an emoji in a text message? Then you’ve succumbed to the power of symbols.

Before written language, humans used symbols or hieroglyphs. Famously, the ancient Egyptians made beautiful use of hieroglyphics. In a sense, what is the alphabet but a highly precise communication system of symbols?

Shopkeepers have always understood this power too.

Stick a red and white striped pole above your door and you are letting the passing public know they can get a shave or their hair trimmed inside. Three balls hanging outside your premises alerts citizens down on their luck that they can pawn their belongings for cold hard cash if they cross the threshold.

The sign of a red cross on your door in the 14th century ensured nobody visited for fear of contracting the Black Death.

Interestingly, the red cross was later adopted as the universal sign of medicine and hospitals.

Perhaps the most infamous example of a symbol being hijacked is the swastika.

Before the rise of the Nazi Party, the four-legged sign was sacred in many cultures and religions including Buddhism and Hinduism for centuries before Hitler corrupted it.

Occultism too is rich in symbology, the most famous perhaps the pentagram.

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus meaning clandestine.

Conspiracy theorists will tell you that the Illuminati embedded clandestine symbols such as the all-seeing eye and the pyramid in our culture, architecture and even our bank notes.

The trouble is, once you know all this, it’s very hard not to spot them everywhere.

Seeing as these words are about to crash the bottom of this column, I’ll take that as a sign that I’m finished.