Harley-Davidson logo: origins and evolution
It is impossible to measure the number of Harley-Davidson aficionados. In fact, during its history, the company has managed to ensure itself the love of an infinite number of bikers and become iconic.
Harley-Davidson had the ability to constantly renovate itself to stay ahead of time; in this article we want to talk about a topic that has always caught the interest of many bikers: the Harley-Davidson logo!
The logo that the Milwaukee based company is using nowadays is well known by everyone: the company name Harley-Davidson, written in white, is enclosed into the bar, and the words “Motor” and “Cycles” written in orange are enclosed in the shield. Let’s see how it evolved over time.
Harley-Davidson Logo: evolution
Starting from the origin: designed by Janet Davidson in 1910, the first logo – named bar and shield – had the company name Harley-Davidson written with tight and tall lettering inside a bar designed over a shield. Basically, everything was exactly positioned as the one we see today. The design of the shield, however, was different: it had a boxier look to it.
In 1953, for the company 50° Anniversary, Harley-Davidson came up with a celebrative design: it was composed of a circle and a V that symbolized the engine structure. The bar featured the brand name in cursive and the shield, instead of the lettering “motor” and “cycles”, featured the letterings “50 years” and “American Made”.
The company managed to create a celebrative medallion that rocked a unique and elegant design.
Later on, during the 80’s, the company reviewed the original logo giving it rounder borders and a more modern and organized lettering. A fundamental part of this process was the addition of the orange that we can still find in the Harley-Davidson logo of our days.
Harley-Davidson logo: special editions
As we said before, during its history, Harley-Davidson has always created special logos to celebrate anniversaries. Let’s dive into the versions they designed for the 100th and 105th anniversaries.
In 2003 the company celebrated its 100th anniversary and for the occasion they decided to come up with a celebrative logo design which featured the classic Harley-Davidson logo with decorative wings, 1903 and 2003 written on the sides, and a big 100 written in the center.
In 2008, for its 105th anniversary, the company created a design that featured a winged Harley-Davidson logo with the number 105 on top, all inside a circle engrave with the dates 1902-2008.
For the 110th anniversary, the special version of the Harley-Davidson Logo did not change much from the one f the previous celebration. The only notable thing was the spead wings that resembled the wings that fighter pilots wear.
For its 115th anniversary the company really outdid itself and designed my favourite Harley-Davidson Logo so far: a bald eagle grasping on the bar ‘n shield. Absolutely fantastic.
We are curious to know what the next special Harley-Davison logo design will be. We do not know how it is going to look but we are sure it is going to be awesome.
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