The Pareidolia Problem

Why Does My Logo Look Like a Penis?

Every kid who’s ever lived has spent a summer afternoon gazing up at the clouds and pointing out elephants, dragons, and monsters. Nearly all of us carry this innate ability to attribute unintended meaning to random shapes with us into adulthood. Have you ever looked at an electrical outlet, car, or grilled cheese sandwich and inexplicably seen a face looking back at you? Why does this happen? Are we living in a simulation? Is there some hidden significance to our collective inability to simply see the thing we’re looking at as what it is rather than something else entirely?

There’s a word for this phenomenon, it’s called pareidolia. Pareidolia is a psychological occurrence that happens when the brain interprets random patterns as familiar shapes, often leading people to see faces or objects in clouds, rock formations, or other ambiguous stimuli. While this can be a fun summer pastime for the beach vacationers among us it can also be an expensive lesson for the brand builders in our midst.

Why? Because if your logo, campaign, trade show booth, truck wrap, location sign, or anything permanent and physical is creating unintended visual meaning, it could mean tearing it all down and starting over to avoid humiliation and negative attention. Or—potentially more costly—it could mean living with a brand identity that’s sending the wrong message.

How am I qualified to give you marketing professionals and entrepreneurs advice about visual meaning (intentional and unintentional)? Well, ahem. I was trained as an industrial designer at the University of Cincinnati in the design, art, and architecture program (DAAP). The program is filled with design theory: material processes, packaging, ergonomics, product design and a heavy dose of graphic design. It was a well-rounded curriculum that often revealed the intended and unintended consequences of visual communication.

So, my experience is that pareidolia can be the king of your kingdom or the downfall of your empire. That’s a bit lofty, but stay with me because there’s good news. Pareidolia can be used for evil, but it can also be used for good. Following is my guide to using the power of pareidolia for good to benefit your brand.

What is good pareidolia?

A great example is the identity I created for a brand that grew rapidly into a national and international force, in large part because of the power of good pareidolia.

The brand is CycleBar, an indoor cycling franchise concept that launched with a single location in Cincinnati but quickly grew to be an industry-leading brand in the boutique fitness space.

The target audience was women aged 35-50 who wanted to add a bit of excitement to their typical suburban experience. We set out to develop an identity that communicated the aggressiveness, energy, and excitement of attending a rock concert, balanced with approachable shapes that keep the brand from feeling intimidating. The end result was a monogram that creates a memorable form with a negative space that looks like something else —someone intensely riding a bike. The CycleBar logo succeeded because we used pareidolia to skirt the line of “looks like” and “is,” making an impactful and recognizable brandmark that delivers a secondary visual surprise that delights people when they see it.

Now for some examples of bad pareidolia

Thankfully, I’m not responsible for any of the following logos, but to any designers or band-builders out there who had anything to do with them, my apologies for making you an example. To everyone else, heed my words so that you can avoid this conundrum for your brand or client.

As you can see, the power of bad pareidolia is strong. Once you see an unintended shape, you can never unsee it. It pollutes anything else about the brand in the mind of the viewer.

Most of the examples I’m showing are from smaller brands, and arguably, pareidolia is a more damaging problem for them because it’s harder for a small brand to invest in fixing phallic marketing communications materials. However, I’m also showing one example to illustrate that even the world’s largest brands aren’t immune to pareidolia. In one (admittedly unscientific) survey that I did with the first ten people that I ran into, 30% (yeah, I know that’s only three) of the people I asked about the “smile arrow” told me they thought it looked phallic.

Avoiding Bad Pareidolia

So you might be asking, ‘How do I ensure that my brand identity is telling the right story and not giving the wrong impression?’. Avoiding bad pareidolia really comes down to sharing the work with people who haven’t seen it before and being open to their unvarnished opinions. You’re not looking for overall direction from them, just a first impression. And beware of taking too many of their thoughts as gospel. You want to use this exercise as a catastrophe check, not as feedback that needs to be implemented to the letter. If a large percentage of the people you share the work with mention that it looks like something that distracts from your brand message, then it’s time to think about making some design changes. Obviously, focus groups are the time-honored method for testing this type of work, but they can be time-consuming, costly, and contribute to group think that might precipitate revisions that don’t need to be made. Our recommendation would be to get feedback quickly and inexpensively by using one or multiple of the following tactics:

  • Show friends, family, and peers: Share it with ten people you know (or ten strangers) to get their initial impression. Don’t lead the witness, just ask for what they see and feel at first glance.

  • Conduct quick surveys: Use online survey platforms (like Google Forms and SurveyMonkey) to gather thoughts and opinions from a small, representative sample of your target audience.

  • Share it on your social media platforms: Social media is perfect for drawing out people’s opinions. The good news is people won’t hold back to spare your feelings. That’s also the bad news. Be prepared for all levels of challenging feedback, but remember, you’re just looking for trends. If a lot of people think it looks like a penis, it probably looks like a penis.

  • Work with a great agency partner: A great agency partner can take care of all this and more. If you’re in the market for a new brand identity or would like a FREE objective opinion on your current brand identity, let Freshwater take a look. We’d be happy to help. If you’re interested, contact us at info@freshwatercreative.com