The first person to sketch a logo for Starbucks was a graphic designer named Terry Heckler. This was back in the early 1970s, when coffee came in tin cans labelled Folger's or Hills Brothers. In a series of brainstorming sessions, the founders of Starbucks forged an early identity for the company in a process that would become familiar to dozens of dot-com board rooms: how do we define our identity with a name and a graphic identity.
The gent who came up with the notion of a better coffee, what we'd call "artisan" today, was a well-traveled Seattle journalist named Gordon Bowker, and both Bowker and Heckler thought that the new brand of coffee should embody a unique sense of adventure, specifically the seafaring history that reflected Seattle's position at the northwest corner of the United States.
It didn't take them long to hit upon one of the cornerstones of American literature, Herman Melville's epic novel of single-minded devotion to a seemingly impossible goal, Captain Ahab's pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. The narrator of the story identifies himself as Ishmael, the ship is the Pequod, and the first mate is Mister Starbuck. But we do not drink Moby, Pequod, Ishmael or Ahab coffee, we drink Starbucks.
And that may be because Heckler and Bowker were also students of product names. Plosive and sibillant consonants, they felt, ("p" sounds and "s" sounds) created the most memorable names.
So now the founders had the elements they needed: a name and a theme. They had a product, as well. Bowker used to drive to British Columbia to buy freshly roasted coffee beans from a vendor in Vancouver, but they knew they'd have to have a local roaster if they wanted a commercial venture in Seattle; they located their new apparatus (which we'd call a micro-roaster today) on Vashon Island, a short ferry ride from downtown.
Heckler started looking through old books for illustrations of sirens, sprites, water nymphs, mermaids. The earliest version was brown and fierce-looking; her breasts had nipples, and her tail was forked. By 1992 the look had softened to a bright green; the nipples were discretely covered by her hair, and the tail became a wrap-around.
And then, in 2011, the company completely removed the words "Starbucks Coffee" from its logo. The mermaid became a stylized princess with a crown.
Was this an attempt at a Nike-style "swoosh" that transcended the company name? Or was because Starbucks was struggling to maintain its position on the cutting edge of the coffee experience? Or was it a recognition that the Starbucks brand now encompassed so many concepts in so many countries that words had become redundant?
Disclosure: My portfolio, such as it is, includes Starbucks stock worth less than $5,000.
