OUGD504 - Logostarter - Successful and Unsuccessful Logos

I had a look at some successful and unsuccessful existing logos to try and established some ideas of what makes a good or bad logo.

The below logos are all successful in my opinion. 

Northwest Airlines logo looks simple at first, but when you look closer, the N on the left combines with the little triangle and the negative space to make a W as well (NorthWest). Also, the arrow is pointing to the top right of a circle, implying North West on a compass.

Amazon has an arrow that resembles a smile on it, but it also starts at the "a" and very specifically finishes at the "z", with the arrow showing the idea that they sell everything from A to Z.

The shapes which make up the letters in the word Vaio are shaped like the symbols for analog and digital, which is relevant given that it's a TV company. That said, I imagine they probably came up with the logo before the name in this case, it just seems to perfect.

   

The Baskin Robins and FedEx logos use the positioning of their letters to create a hidden message. The angle and spacing between the "B" and "R" create the number 31, which is the number of flavours they produce. This is highlighted by using a changing its colour. The FedEx logo has no spacing between the letters, and has a very specific x-height in order to create an arrow between the "E" and "x" which suggests something getting from somewhere to somewhere else. 

The next 3 images I found are bad logos. They aren't explained because it's obvious why they're bad.

Conclusion

Good logos are simple, often with a hidden meaning behind them, and generally they're text based. None of them have any intricacies so they can be repeated at numerous sizes, and they're no more than two colours, with the colour being in blocks.