KFC logo

In the early 1950’s in Salt Lake City, USA, Pete Harman opened a fast food restaurant. In 1952 Harman met Sanders in Chicago. At the time, Sanders, a versatile and experienced cook, was working out of a successful restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. During his time there, Harman visited this restaurant on a daily basis and sampled Sander’s cooked chicken coated in a special mixture of herbs and spices. He loved the chicken and its coating so much that he proposed to Sanders that they work together to build the cooked chicken business. Once customers had tasted this special coating, then the business grew. It became known as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and as a result of its popularity, franchise stores began to sprout up all over the country. The "Kentucky Fried Chicken" brand was changed to the abbreviation KFC from the early 1990s so as to move away from the fatty connotation of the word fried. The logo itself as shown to the left depicts the creator of KFC - Sanders himself. KFC has kept a remarkably consistent visual identity - maintaining the defining elements of Colonel Sanders’ image while adapting to the visual shifts of the fast food industry. The new KFC brand will be followed by a 65,000 square foot logo in the Area 51 dessert - that can be seen from space - code-named the "Face from Space" and consisting of 14,000 white, 6,000 red, 12,000 eggshell, 28,000 black and 5,000 beige tiles. The new KFC logo was designed by San Francisco-based Tesser. The drawing has dynamism, depth and dimension, without resorting to shading, showing that a well-conceived set of shapes can communicate more directly and boldly than any amount of shading will ever do. The new brand conveys the efforts that KFC has made over the last couple of years to animate the brand with energetic and fresh ads and position it to compete against Crispin-led Burger King and McDonald’s. This is a corporate logo design that works well across web, TV, print and environmental contexts and most of all, is appropriate for its audience, market and visual context.