BEHIND THE BLUE OVAL

January 21, 2020
Posted by Barrett-Jackson

Ford’s iconic logo is among the most recognizable car emblems; representative of one of the oldest and most valuable brands globally.

When Henry Ford began his revolutionary automotive company in 1903, the official Ford emblem was a rather intricate circle with art nouveau borders, bearing the words “Ford Motor Co. Detroit Mich.″ at the center. But all that changed in 1907, when the first signature-based Ford logo was utilized. While rumors abounded that the emblem was actually Henry Ford’s signature, it was actually created by the company’s first chief engineer/designer Childe Harold Wills, a friend of Ford’s, who used the lettering from his grandfather’s stencil set to get the job done. The text wasn’t set on the famous Blue Oval background until 1927, although an oval was used from 1907 onward in the U.K.

Apart from a brief and unsuccessful Ford design in 1912 that put the brand signature on top of an orange and dark blue winged pyramid, and a sleek, modernized version of the Ford text graphic proposed in 1966, today’s Blue Oval remains much as it did from the very beginning, an iconic symbol of a world-renowned brand.