Saying “It reminds me of something, but I’m not sure what,” Glenn Reynolds linked this picture of the red hot new Dodge logo:
It reminded me of something too. (Especially what’s buried in the middle.)
I think it’s surprisingly evocative of the notorious 1933-1945 German Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht military logo, the dreaded Balkenkreuz.
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To illustrate, I cropped the cross from the center of the Dodge logo and added a little olive drab.
Wouldn’t look bad on a plane or a tank! And best of all, the logo is inside a shield — the kind that would look just stunning on a helmet! (The red color in the background adds an even niftier subliminal touch, now that I think about it…)
The beauty of the Balkenkreuz design lies in its utter simplicity. It boils down to four L-shapes arranged in 90 degree symmetry.
Like this way cool Balkenkreuz T-shirt:
Impress your friends!
Fun and games with Balkenkreuz subliminalism
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9 responses to “Fun and games with Balkenkreuz subliminalism”
I thought of a cross, too. The Cross of St. George. Think a red cross with a white background on a shield and you have the typical look of a soldier from Crusades.
Funny, I thought it looked like a logo for “Transformers”. Guess it all depends on what you’ve seen.
At first glance I thought, “Victorinox.” How many kinds of accessories can you bolt on to a Dodge truck?
Eric, I’m with you–that’s the first thing I thought of, too.
I’m a 42 year old guy who used to build a lot of plastic WW II model of planes, ships and tanks and my first thought was of the Transformers logo.
And I was never into Transformers so that goes to how successful their marketing has been.
🙂
But…. I can see how you’d get the Balkenkreuz out of the logo. Regardless, someone at Dodge is going to have an “Ah crap” moment soon if they haven’t already.
-A
It’s kinda unfair to not point out that it was used during WWI as well.
(Me, though, I just think it’s a Dodge grill.)
That’s really reaching, Eric. 🙂
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Sigivald, you are right that the Balkenkreuz was used in WWI, and I think a good argument can be made that if fairness requires discussing the full history, then it was was kinda unfair of me not to mention it.
It was probably also unfair of me not to point out that its WWI implementation by the Luftwaffe’s precursor was derived from the Greek Cross:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftstreitkr%C3%A4fte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross
And I do try to be fair, but if I started thinking about the fairness aspects of everything I write about, it would be distracting and there’d be no end to it.
Does fairness dictate that the history of the swastika as an ancient and benevolent symbol always be pointed out when the image is mentioned?
That the “Sig Rune” of the SS was not created by the Nazis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Rune
That the SS Death’s Head has a long history of military usage dating back to Frederick the Great?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totenkopf
That the Goose Step dates back to the 18th century, and is used in countries friendly to the United States?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stechschritt
There is no end to fairness, but sometimes it can get tedious enough to drive me crazy!
There is no end to fairness, but sometimes it can get tedious enough to drive me crazy!
And that’s not fair!
Me? I thought it looked more like the Honda ‘H’.