What You Can Learn About Your Most Creative Venture from the FedEx Logo

PS: It has something to do with seeing what you’ve never seen before

Photo by Bannon Morrissy on Unsplash

“It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.” — Henry David Thoreau

See that FedEx logo on the truck? What do you see? Letters? Colors? Shapes? Probably. But if that’s all you see, you are missing something essential.

Take another look. Do you see an arrow? A white arrow? No? Look again.

Now look at the space in between the second “E” and the “x” — the so-called “white space”. See what’s there? It’s an arrow — the iconic symbol for the service FedEx provides: moving things forward.

Cool, huh?

ArtCenter grad, Lindon Leader, was the designer of the FedEx logo. He designed it in 1994 and found a very clever, subliminal way to embed FedEx’s mission into its logo. Most people have been looking at that logo for years and, until someone points out the arrow, will confess to never having seen it before.

D’oh!

Given our very human tendency to miss what’s right in front of us, here’s a question worth noodling on for the next few minutes: