While the Maggi logo has been updated multiple times, the palette and the style of the typeface have remained the same over much of the company’s around 135-year history.
The history of the brand started in Switzerland in 1884 when Julius Maggi took over the mill that belonged to his father.
The logo had nothing in common with the current one but the red color and the fact that the word “Maggi” was the centerpiece of the design.
However, here, it featured a different script. It was inspired by handwriting and included strokes of various thicknesses. There were a lot of elaborate curls.
You can already recognize the simple style that is distinctive of the brand’s current packaging. The wordmark featured a plain bold sans serif font without any ornamental elements.
Above, the letter “M” inside a square could be seen. The square, in its turn, was placed at the center of a four-pointed star.
The background was partly yellow and partly red.
In 1947, the brand was purchased by Nestlé, which has been its parent company ever since. The change of the owner affected the Maggi logo.
Nestlé preserved the color scheme and the overall look of the type but made the design simpler and more meaningful.
The wordmark was now placed inside a red shape, which could be described as a combination of a heart and a drop. The drop could be interpreted as a hint on the soups cooked with the help of Maggi products (for instance, its popular bouillon cubes).
Also, the shape was somewhat similar to a hen’s wattle, the fleshy caruncles hanging from the bird’s head.
The capital letters were replaced by lowercased ones (except for the initial, the “M”). This resulted in a slightly more rounded and friendly style that better fitted the drop shape in the background. The type, though, remained a simple sans serif one.
The 2020 logo is basically the same red emblem, but without the lighting. They also put it in the middle of a yellow card for this one.