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[dagobert]

My brother is writing a paper about the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney. Now we are searching for inormations about the Walt Disney font and the logo.

Should the logo resemble Walt Disney's sign? Do you know who designed the logo and when it was introduced?
I think it was at the beginning of Michael Eisner's leadership.

Thanks for your help.

[pussinboots]

I really wish I knew something interesting, but alas. It's obviously a stylized version of Walt's signature, which occasionally looked like the logo:

But usually not that much:

Although he always had a loopy handwriting, circling the dots on his "i"s and all. The first use of it I can find is the "Fantasia" re-release in 1982, although it wasn't used on the "Mickey's Christmas Carol" poster a year later.

[dagobert]

Thanks for your help pussinboots. He skiped the topic about the logo, because it is really hard to find good infos.

[RiverRogue]

I guess I'm late for the original purpose, but as I happened to do some research on this topic recently I thought I'd post what I found out. (After all, who else is going to care?)

Walt's own signature changed over time but he generally used two "types" of signatures as posted by Pussinboots. Variations of the "small caps" signature have appeared on Disney products as early as the 1930s. At first they only appeared as the "artist's" signature (although obviously none of the art was actually done by Walt) but by the 1940s it appeared as part of the product's title e.g. on comic book covers.

Over the following decades the company kept using different versions by various artists which reflected Walt's actual autograph more or less closely. These variations developed over time and one would inspire another. The script type signature also spawned several logo variations by the 1950s. It seems that there was no rule or guideline for when to use which kind of logo, often opting for a design to fit with the general look of whatever graphic it was part of.

I've traced the current logo back to 1975 when it appears as part of the Magic Kingdom Club logo. It may well be older but I haven't found any evidence so far. In any case, it was picked as the corporate design's logo of choice when Walt Disney Productions became The Walt Disney Company in 1986. It was coupled with Times to represent (nearly) all the company's divisions in that major overhaul of the company under Eisner, Katzenberg and Wells.

As a footnote, it would seem that after more than 20 years they're backing away from that company-wide homogenization now. Currently, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and (more visibly) Walt Disney Animation Studios are both using redrawn variations of the standard logo.

[dagobert]

Thanks a lot for the infos, RiverRogue.

[ChristianBreaux]

Great information Guys.. Walt Disney's logo is inspired by the curves of Mr. Disney's signature. I think the Roy Disney is also involved in making of this logo.