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Jun Park

Professor King

WRIT 2 – Section 2500

12/9/19

Logo: Genre We See Everyday

Every writer makes various choices when they are writing. When authors are considering

what choice to make, they think about the scene and situation they are responding to. In such

moment, authors can use genre to help them. Genre is a kind of writing which responds to the

specific needs of a situation, which develops distinct formal features through repeated use (Lisa,

“Pressbooks”). A piece of writing must have three qualities to qualify as a genre. First is that a

genre is situated. People communicate with genres; the genre is delivering messages to the

receiver in order to respond to the specific need of situation. Secondly, genre recurs. If one thing

is a genre, it means that it has repeatedly happened many times that it’s been remembered by

people to be used in a specific situation. For example, logo of Apple product is a known logo

after a long use. As Apple products were used more by people, the logo of Apple, the bitten

apple, became also famous with the product. And now, most people recognize that a gadget is an

Apple product when they notice the bitten apple. Lastly, a genre must have a distinct

characteristic. Since every genre is used to answer different situation, it must have its own

significance to make themselves a genre. When a writing has all three of these qualities, then the

writing could be a genre. How about logo as a genre? As mentioned earlier, genre must have

three qualities. Logo is situated, the rhetor is sending messages through logo to the receiver.

Logo has been used repeatedly. It’s been used for a long time that people now know that logo is

used at product for advertisement. Lastly, logo has its own significant feature. When people see
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logos that are stuck on the wall, people can easily identify that they are logos. In this essay, I am

going to analyze logo as a genre and argue that logo effectively accomplishes the need of the

rhetor.

The basic function of genre is to help the readers and writers. The use of genre allows

writers to know what to do and what not to do for situation. Let’s say a designer is making a

logo. The designer would know that he or she should not be using a long introduction in what he

or she is making. This is called constraints, the limitation of how message is delivered. The genre

allows the rhetor to deliver their message with least distraction, and the readers to know what to

look for. Simply put, genre helps people to accomplish their goals in writing. As mentioned

earlier, a genre allows the rhetors to deliver their message in most effective way. When a

designer is making a logo for a product, he or she would want to make the logo eye-catching and

attracting audiences. Then the rhetor would follow the genre and may be use bold and yellow or

red colored letter to attract people’s attention. This is because the genre allows rhetor to predict

how the receiver of the message would react. In the case of logo, the rhetor can expect the

readers to be attracted by it, and may be curious about the logo. The readers can also use genre

for their understanding as well. If they see a logo, they can assume the message is a

representation of the product where the logo is placed.

Then what is the features that make logo a logo? How is it developed? Logos are

everywhere. It is on most of the things that we see on the streets. Logos are meant to advertise

the product or the company to the audience. To maximize the advertisement effect, the rhetors

want the logo to be exposed to a lot of people as many times as possible. Therefore, logos had

been developed to be located anywhere with strong impression. And to increase the impact,

logos are usually very simple. It is usually composed of few words or drawings or sometimes
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both. Although logos are known as one of the best ways to represent the producers, the logos do

not contain a long introduction of the company, all it barely has is the name of the company.

Such compactness wouldn’t be able to deliver a brand introduction to people who might desire it.

People can only afford to know the name of the company and probably a little more, but they

won’t be able to know deeply about the company. Then how does this compactness cause more

impact on people? The logo exempted the use of long words that might make people bored and

made use of significant color or drawing that could become a distinctive representation of the

company. The scene and situation where logos are usually seen also contributed to the

compactness of the logo. For example, a lot of people will see logo while walking down the

streets. The pedestrians have their destination, and most of them are busy walking to their job,

school, or etc. In this case, people don’t look at the logo closely to know what it is about, they

only have a short glance for less than a second. To catch their attention in less than a second,

rhetors decided to make logos as compact as possible in order for people to have a full picture in

very short amount of time. Some logos used only a word or two that will easily be remembered

by people. Some logos included conspicuous colors that will attract people’s attention. Other

logos used significant drawings in logo that represent themselves. This allowed fast-walking

audiences to have a strong impression on logos by just having a glance on it for less than a

second.

Do logos satisfy the need of its users? As mentioned earlier, the primary function of the

logo is to advertise the company to the audience. Logos are created to satisfy the need of the

rhetors to advertise their companies, and it is used everywhere to satisfy those needs. The logos

became a genre that all producers must have in order to represent their company. For example, a

famous cloth brand, Adidas, uses three stripes as its logo. The three stripes in the logo represent
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one of their steady-seller, shoes. As Adidas got famous, the three stripes logo got famous as well.

When people see clothes, shoes, or anything with three stripes, they immediately knew that those

clothes were from Adidas. As people start to notice more three stipes clothes on the streets,

people would first look for Adidas clothes when they are trying to buy clothes. This is simply

because people tend to be attracted by familiar product. This is a subjective approach that could

vary by people; however, the company can only benefit but not lose from more exposure to the

people. Different commercial method had been developed to efficiently advertise to people,

however, exposure through logos have been fixed as the most common way of advertising way

to people. Therefore, it can be said that the genre logo effectively accomplishes the goal that it

was intended to achieve.

In conclusion, this essay analyzes the genre logo, what logo is, how it has been

developed, and if it accomplishes what its users intended. Logos are genre that has been used for

long as a representation of the product and the company. It was created and developed in order to

advertise to broad audience by exposure of logos to the people. Its significance has brought

efficient effect to the users of the logos. The compactness of logos has allowed it to be located

anywhere the rhetor wants and its significance allowed it to leave a strong impression on people.

Nowadays, logo became the first thing that people look for when they are interested about a

product. And it can surely be said that effect is useful and efficient and satisfy the needs of

rhetor.
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Work Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. “GENRE in the WILD: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical

(Eco)Systems.” GENRE IN THE WILD: UNDERSTANDING GENRE WITHIN

RHETORICAL (ECO)SYSTEMS, Pressbooks, 1 Aug. 2016,

https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-

within-rhetorical-ecosystems/.