The Best Logo
What is the most recognizable symbol or logo in the world? Some might look to the Nike swoosh, while others might think of the Apple logo on electronic devices.
But when it comes to longevity and multi-layered message, you probably can’t beat the American flag…and that’s something U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio no doubt had in mind.
Many of the outreach efforts providing aid from this country to others was within a subagency, US-AID…which itself had a variety of programs under its umbrella, programs with long and important sounding names. Even with cutting abuse, waste, and fraud, many of those entities still exist, but they are all under the purview of the Department of State these days.
Each of them had fancy logos to go along with those long and important sounding names. From a branding standpoint, those were fine for promoting those programs, but there was something missing—who provided the money for the programs, which is the American citizen through taxes.
So all of those aid programs will now operate under a single logo—the American flag. When a box of materials is sent, it has a flag on it. When programs are promoted, it’s with the American flag and not some program logo.
His post on X just before Independence Day made it clear: “No more rainbow of unidentifiable logos on life-saving aid. There will now be one recognizable symbol: the American flag.”
And what better way to encourage goodwill toward the U.S. It certainly worked when Herbert Hoover was in charge of distributing live-saving aid from Americans to folks across the globe after not one, but two world wars.
Forget the politics of the programs and where the aid is going; the fact that it wasn’t clear to recipients that it came from the U.S. and its citizens needed a change. And you didn’t need a high-priced graphic artist and team of marketers to come up with this logo.
