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TriviaCNN's logo has been seen and recognized all over the world, but like the rest of the network, it has roots in Atlanta.
3 letters, 48 hours, 1 logo"In the eleventh hour, it occurred to someone that they needed a logo," said Toni Dwyer of Communication Trends, Inc, and the ad firm that worked with CNN before it got off the ground in 1980. "We had about 24 or 48 hours to turn around and present a logo."
The logo was designed by the late Anthony Guy Bost, who had also been a professor at the University of Auburn. Dwyer distinctly remembered presenting the designs to the powers that be. "There were several forms of the logo they weren't exactly wild about, there was one we thought would play the best, we tried to keep it simple," said Dwyer. "It was designed with money in mind, so we tried to keep it one color."
Terry McGuirk, currently the chairman of the Atlanta Braves, was first to see the logo. "They gave us 4 or 5 different looks, and one sort of stood out, a cable running through the letters C-N-N," said McGuirk, who in 1980 was vice president of Turner Broadcasting and very involved in the startup of CNN.
CNN founder Ted Turner liked the logo, and the choice was made. It finally came time to talk money. "For the price of the logo, we wanted something like $5,000," said Dwyer of Communication Trends. "They (CNN) all threw a fit, and the final bill for the logo was $2,800 or $2,400."
The logo was not without its critics. Canadian National Railway believed it closely resembled its logo and raised some concern about the matter. "I didn't know anything about railroads or the Canadian National Railroad," Dwyer said. "When I looked at the logos, it wasn't even close."
Part of the reason the CNN logo became such a strong symbol might have to do with the fact that it was almost always placed on the television screen, now commonly known as a "bug" in broadcast lingo. This idea was the brainchild of Burt Reinhardt, who served as CNN's president from 1982 to 1990, after which he became vice chairman. McGuirk distinctly remembered the reasoning of placing the logo on screen. "People weren't used to getting their news from a 24-hour network," he said. "We didn't want them to mistake it for a different network."
30 years laterThirty years later, that logo designed in less than 48 hours is still on the screen, although it's been slightly changed and sometimes animated. According to Dwyer, when some suggested changing the logo years later, Turner wouldn't hear of it. "He put his foot down and said 'absolutely not,' " said Dwyer. "That gave me a lot of gratification."
The above is taken completely from the article '3 letters, 48 hours, 1 logo' by Cody Sigel Combs.
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