For centuries, the elephant has been associated with positive qualities, and designers use the elephant image to convey deep meaning and symbolism. This large, kind-hearted, and wise giant, endowed with incredible memory and strength, provides brands with a powerful way to communicate reliability, stability, and durability.
In many cultures, the elephant holds a special status. In Southeast Asia, it embodies luck and spiritual well-being; in the Middle East and Africa, it symbolizes royalty, nobility, and respect. Its natural power blends with kindness, and its enormous size doesn’t prevent it from being a sensitive and caring creature. Therefore, companies that choose an elephant for their logo want to emphasize solidity, strength, friendliness, customer respect, and a wise approach to business.
Modern elephant logos vary widely in style and execution, from realistic depictions to minimalist and abstract forms. Each brand finds its way to represent the elephant, fully expressing its character and underlining what the company wants to communicate to its audience.
Below, we will explore some of the most interesting examples of such logos in detail and try to understand the stories they tell through the image of this majestic animal.
Crabbie’s
The British beverage brand Crabbie’s logo features a carefully detailed elephant with a vintage flair. The visual design evokes associations with the company’s history, founded in Edinburgh in 1801. The elephant symbolizes exoticism and distant journeys, reflecting the uniqueness of beverage recipes made from spices and ginger. The composition of the elephant and golden ribbon adds an atmosphere of nobility and tradition to the logo, emphasizing the uniqueness and character of the products.
Mammut
The Mammut logo conveys the power and reliability of the Swiss brand. A bright red silhouette of a mammoth enclosed within a circle communicates the unwavering strength and durability of the company’s gear. The mammoth, a symbol of survival in harsh conditions, resonates with the brand’s products for extreme mountain expeditions and challenging ascents. The emblem combines the company’s alpine roots with its determination to overcome obstacles to reach the summit.
Apache Hadoop
The elephant in the Apache Hadoop logo is one of IT technologies’ most vivid and recognizable characters. The cute yellow elephant was named after the stuffed toy of the project founder’s child, making the brand even more relatable and understandable to its audience. The company deals with massive amounts of data; the elephant symbolizes excellent memory and the ability to process and store information. The playful style of the design conveys the idea that serious technological challenges are solved with ease and a positive attitude.
Animal Planet
The elephant image in the Animal Planet logo is portrayed unconventionally and dynamically. Instead of a realistic depiction, the designers proposed an abstract, minimalist form that evokes associations with natural freedom and lightness. The bright blue color of the elephant emphasizes positivity and cheerfulness, reflecting the diversity of wildlife that the channel presents to viewers. Using the elephant image is logical for the brand, as elephants symbolize wisdom and humanity’s connection with nature, guiding the channel to explore the captivating animal world.
Rajah
The Rajah logo stands out for its nobility and elegance, as well as a golden-colored elephant standing on elevated ground with its trunk raised. The brand deliberately chose the animal’s pose since, in Asian traditions, a raised trunk symbolizes luck, prosperity, and hospitality. The company specializes in spices and Eastern cuisine products, and the logo conveys warmth and the comfort of home. The elephant as the central figure highlights the East’s authenticity and deep culinary traditions, which the company strives to preserve and deliver to its customers.
First Bank of Nigeria
First Bank of Nigeria has used an elephant for many years, emphasizing the stability and reliability of the bank’s financial services. The dark-blue silhouette of the animal against a yellow background looks serious yet positive. The elephant in this symbolism was chosen to represent longevity, wisdom, and calm strength qualities important to customers when they entrust their finances to someone.
Ivory Ella
American brand Ivory Ella combines style with environmental care. Their cute and friendly elephant logo is presented in a minimalist style: the animal is drawn with a neat, continuous line without complicated details. Behind this image lies the company’s commitment to elephant conservation. A portion of the profit from each sale goes toward helping these animals. The logo conveys the brand’s softness, openness, and positivity, resonating with a young audience that aspires to positively impact the world.
Fevicol
The Indian company Fevicol chose elephants as symbols to emphasize the strength of their adhesives. The logo shows two massive, dark blue elephants pulling a sphere in opposite directions, demonstrating an unbreakable and durable bond. The orange semicircle behind the animals hints at sunrise, symbolizing new opportunities and confidence in each new day. In India, elephants signify strength and prosperity, making the logo a perfect representation of the glue’s reliability, capable of withstanding any load or challenge.
Côte d’Or
For more than a century, Côte d’Or has been associated with the taste of chocolate and exotic aromas of distant Africa. The golden-red logo featuring a proud white elephant hints at the shores of Ghana, where the brand historically sourced high-quality cocoa beans. The elephant in the logo is no random visitor: the animal was often encountered in the wild of the “Gold Coast,” becoming a living embodiment of the exotic richness of flavors associated with the brand’s products.
Elephant Insurance
The Elephant Insurance logo presents an image of an elephant softly transitioning from gray into a pinkish gradient. Its restrained and contemporary design makes the image solid yet accessible to insurance company customers. The company chose the elephant to represent its successful insurance services’ reliability, protection, and confidence. Simple and clear shapes highlight the brand’s convenience and openness to clients, while the bright yellow lettering against the animal’s silhouette adds a touch of positivity and optimism.
Thai Taste
Thai Taste surprised everyone with an unusual approach to using an elephant in their logo. The animal is subtly depicted: an elegant line, resembling the curve of a trunk, gently descends from above, merging into the letter “e” at the bottom corner of the composition. This stylish image highlights the elegance and sophistication of the brand’s traditional Thai cuisine. This symbol reflects Thailand’s cultural connection with the elephant, its national animal, which embodies wisdom and harmony.
Peter Schmidt Group
The logo of the design agency, Peter Schmidt Group, is crafted with a special sense of style and refinement. The image of a black elephant with an ornamental blanket references traditional cultural motifs, showing the company’s respect for diversity and historical heritage. Elegant lines and carefully detailed ornaments give the image sophistication, emphasizing the brand’s pursuit of harmony and aesthetic design. The visual element is accompanied by a strict, concise typeface, reinforcing the impression of reliability and professionalism that the design studio conveys through its projects.
Amarula
For Amarula liqueur, the elephant symbol directly connects with the drink’s African roots. The depiction of the animal in the logo features vibrant copper shades, conveying the warmth of the African sun under which marula fruits, the drink’s main ingredient, ripen. The elephant in the emblem appears dignified and majestic, evoking the natural beauty of Africa and emphasizing the exotic and original taste of Amarula. The lettering at the top of the logo is smooth and slightly curved, visually echoing the shape of the elephant’s head, creating a cohesive image filled with natural energy and African flair.
Golumbia Video
The Golumbia Video logo appears stern and bold due to the large gray elephant occupying nearly the entire surface of the circular icon. The animal’s serious gaze and expressive tusks command respect and associations with strength and power, aligning with the company’s reputation for producing and distributing films, predominantly in Bollywood. In Indian culture, the elephant symbolizes wisdom and stability, and its use underscores the brand’s aspiration to create and provide reliable, quality content.
Bolton Wanderers
The elephant on the Bolton Wanderers soccer club emblem is depicted in a classic heraldic style. It calmly stands on a green surface, with a yellow fortress and towers above it, symbolizing the club’s strength and traditions. The heraldic composition, accented with shades of gray, green, and red, speaks to the club’s historical roots and stability. The elephant is associated with power, endurance, and determination qualities that soccer fans appreciate in a team. The Latin motto “Supera Moras” translates to “Overcome Difficulties.” The elephant on the crest represents perseverance and a drive for victory.
Elephant Gin
Elephant Gin incorporates an elephant into its logo, but with an unusual and original detail: the animal is holding a small bottle of gin with its trunk. The logo, executed in calm gray tones, conveys a sense of adventure and travel, inspired by the journeys of founders Tessa and Robin Gerlach across Africa. The brand produces beverages and actively supports African elephant conservation programs, making each customer part of this noble mission.
Chang Beer
The Chang logo immerses us in Thai traditions, where the elephant symbolizes harmony and nobility. The brand’s emblem features two green elephants facing each other respectfully and calmly. Above them is a fountain, symbolizing prosperity and vital energy, reflecting the brand’s essence: the refreshing taste of its beer. The image invites people to experience Asian culture, where traditions run deep and vivid expression is found in every sip of the beverage.
PostgreSQL
The elephant in the PostgreSQL logo is meaningful, reflecting the essence of this database management system. The animal’s head, rendered in blue with smooth, white lines, emphasizes the system’s powerful memory and ability to handle substantial amounts of information, much like an elephant in nature. Animal imagery serves as a key to understanding the concept of reliable and scalable databases.
Elephant Atta
The Elephant Atta brand chose a warm and family-oriented image for its logo: a large elephant and its offspring appear together, creating an atmosphere of care and closeness. This choice reflects the company’s spirit, which has been producing flour for Indian baking for over 50 years, becoming an integral part of family traditions and celebrations. The bright pink background and golden lines lend the logo a festive appearance and highlight respect for culture and heritage. The dual silhouette of elephants symbolizes loyalty to family recipes and the warm relationship between the brand and its customers.
Alabama Crimson Tide
The elephant in the University of Alabama’s athletic program logo looks intimidating and confident, highlighting the fighting spirit and desire to win competitions. The animal became the symbol of the Alabama Crimson Tide team, thanks to a reporter who described the team’s strength using the word “elephants.” Since then, the elephant’s stern look and powerful trunk have been raised high, inspiring players and university fans. Combining gray and dark red shades, the color scheme reinforces impressions of strength, perseverance, and determination.
Apache Hive
An unusual fantasy symbol combines an elephant and a bee in the Apache Hive logo. This creative idea of merging two completely different creatures was original and humorous. The elephant’s head with large ears and the bee’s yellow and black striped body convey a message of combining strength, memory, and diligence. “Hive” indicates efficient task distribution and teamwork, while the elephant adds reliability and large-scale data associations.
White Elephant Resorts
The logo of White Elephant Resorts is soft and refined, matching the premium image of the company’s hotels on Nantucket Island and in Palm Beach. The calm blue color is associated with the sea and relaxing vacations, and the elephant silhouette suggests the rarity and exclusivity characteristic of the brand. The blue elephant appears unobtrusive, conveying a sense of quiet, secluded rest, filled with comfort and elegance, which guests of such places dream about. The company’s name, written in a neat, thin font, emphasizes the image of refined luxury.
Jumbo
The Jumbo logo conveys a particular warmth and optimism. A red elephant, depicted in simple rounded lines, gently holds a green four-leaf clover in its trunk. This image adds friendliness, serving as a metaphor for the luck and joy that the brand shares with its customers. The vivid red-green contrast makes the composition lively, while the elephant logically aligns with the name, evoking associations with scale, stability, and the company’s confidence.
Republican Party of the United States
The elephant on the emblem of the Republican Party of the United States appeared long ago and has become one of the most recognizable political symbols worldwide. The animal’s shape is simple and divided into two zones: the upper blue portion with three stars and the lower red part, the colors of the American flag. In this context, the elephant symbolizes the strength, firmness, and conservatism associated with the party. The logo’s external simplicity and color division carry an important message about national unity and commitment to traditional American ideals. Despite its simplicity, the symbol has a powerful emotional effect, underscoring the seriousness and significance of political ideas.
Mass Media
A purple elephant balancing on a small television set, the Mass Media company’s logo differs from many other media companies. Such an unusual choice hints at balance, skill, and staying afloat in the challenging media market. The animal’s purple hue adds a touch of fantasy and originality, highlighting the company’s creative potential and unconventional approach toward creating and distributing content.
Elephant House Studios
Elephant House Studios approached the creation of its logo with originality and sophistication. The elephant silhouette is executed geometrically and concisely, with the body and trunk presented as separate graphic symbols, lending the image refined simplicity. The company name is set in a strict, modern font, emphasizing the confidence and stability of this studio, which operates in media and visual arts. Choosing an elephant symbolizes the studio’s unwavering commitment to its creative standards and the significance of its content.
Dendy
The elephant on the Dendy emblem symbolizes youth, joy, and nostalgia for the famous gaming console. The cheerful animal wearing a cap and colorful clothing is an icon for an entire generation of gamers in former Soviet countries, a recognizable image representing the fun and excitement of 1990s video games. The victory sign shown by the elephant indicates the ease and enjoyment provided by the console’s games. The colorful palette and friendly animal figure have made this logo popular and beloved to this day, evoking warm memories among adults who grew up with the brand.
Black Ivory Coffee
The Black Ivory Coffee logo combines elegance and exoticism; the black silhouette of an elephant with a raised trunk conveys the unique character of the world’s most expensive coffee variety. The elephant symbolizes the unusual production process as these animals process coffee berries. The contrast between the black image and the elegant, minimalist font highlights the exclusivity and prestige of the beverage. The design’s graceful simplicity enhances the brand’s perception as a premium product aimed at true connoisseurs of taste.
Evernote
The Evernote logo is easily recognizable by its bright green elephant silhouette, which is designed in a minimalist style. The brand’s main idea is to help people remember everything, making an animal with an excellent memory the perfect choice. An important element of the symbol is the folded corner of the ear, which resembles the bent edge of a notebook page, visually linking the elephant to the app’s note-taking function. The black brand name, set in a classic font, contrasts with the green symbol and conveys a sense of reliability and confidence. The app uses the elephant as a metaphor for memory and the careful organization of thoughts and tasks.
Drunk Elephant
Minimalism in the elephant image of the Drunk Elephant logo reflects the brand’s unique approach to cosmetics. The thin, gentle lines forming the animal’s outline convey purity and the naturalness of the brand’s products, which avoid using certain harmful ingredients. The elephant symbolizes the African roots of some of the natural ingredients used by the brand and the gentle effect of the cosmetic products on the skin. The name underscores the brand’s originality and philosophy that cosmetics should be light and safe, just like this graceful drawing.
iA Financial Group
The financial company iA Financial Group is represented by a strict, neat logo featuring an elephant. The minimalist silhouette in gray-blue shades reflects the confidence and reliability essential in the financial sector. The elephant serves as a guarantor of long-term investments and financial stability. The prominent inscription, rendered in a neat, modern font, enhances the sense of trust and professionalism. These characteristics make the elephant a logical choice for a brand clients trust to secure their financial future.
The Hungry Elephant
The Hungry Elephant logo is intriguing due to its artistic depiction of the elephant. The detailed drawing in turquoise tones looks as if a skilled engraver or artist created it. An intricately drawn, ornamental blanket on the animal’s back adds an atmosphere of authenticity, matching the vibe of a cozy establishment or a culinary brand that aims to offer something unusual and vibrant. The name, placed within a strict black frame, balances tradition and modernity, emphasizing the company’s character.
Muthoot Finance
Muthoot Finance, a renowned financial giant from India, placed two elephant silhouettes facing each other at the center of its logo. The white animal profiles stand out against a rich red background, creating a confident and solid image. The symbolism of elephants for a financial company is intentional: in Indian culture, elephants are associated with strength, stability, and prosperity. The symbol harmoniously reflects the company’s operating principles, where reliability and stability are always top priorities.
Cagiva
The Cagiva logo stands out with its aggressive style and red palette, expressing the spirit of speed and adrenaline inherent in motorcycle sports and the products of this Italian motorcycle manufacturer. The elephant head silhouette is rendered with a dynamic tilt, creating a sense of power. The animal imagery hints at the durability and reliability of the company’s machines, which can withstand stress and overcome road challenges. The vivid color emphasizes the excitement and energy of a brand popular among motorsport and extreme riding enthusiasts.
Conclusion
People intuitively perceive the elephant as an unquestionable authority, an animal endowed with natural wisdom and patience. Companies using elephant symbolism intuitively seek to communicate a sense of security and reliability to their audience, emphasizing their solidity, longevity, or status.
However, the elephant image can also convey other meanings: some brands intentionally showcase their uniqueness or express commitment to humane values and environmental initiatives. Occasionally, the elephant appears on logos with playful ease, evoking friendliness and openness, sometimes with a touch of humor. The elephant symbol allows brands to sound genuine, establish emotional connections, and remain memorable.