Why is the Disney "D" So Weird?
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- I am so bummed that this video isn't 15 minutes long. There is so much more to discuss. The Disney brand is fascinating, including the ways in which that brand reaches so far beyond any set of words or bands and into a deep cultural idea. It is, in some ways, outside of what we usually consider a brand, and in other ways maybe the most powerful brand outside of, like, nation states.
Thanks to these people for their knowning or un-knowing help:
Kevin from / defunctland
Lindsay from / chezapoctube
Pencil Bandit: pencilbandit.c...
Kade Fisher: www.deviantart...
Here's a good tidbit I had to cut from this video...in 1922, which Ubbe Iwerks (co-creator of Mickey Mouse) first met Walt Disney, Walt was 19 years old and was literally practicing variations on his signature! Disney's constant variation of his signature apparently started at an early age, and the piece of his signature that he seemingly couldn't settle on was the D. In the end, it was likely not Disney who created this iconic D, but someone working at the company after his death.
Walt Disney was obsessed with the "Disney" image...with his own image and that of his creations. That was certainly unhealthy. It also probably had some seriously negative consequences on him and the people around him. But it also played a part in creating something wonderful.
I REALLY HOPE I DIDN'T GET ANYTHING TOO WRONG IN THIS VIDEO!
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OK! Important Correction / Update. With some great detective work people have found that the loopy D was used VERY occasionally for DECADES before the 80s. The earliest use people have found is from a 1956 Mickey Mouse Club album "Westward Ho the Wagons." www.originalmmc.com/images/Records/DBR-67%20front.jpg
So, basically, they had this logo kicking around for decades in the print department as one of the many logotypes they would use...again, avoiding consistent branding. But the Loopy D was definitely not made in the 80s, which is bad news for finding the origin. Since it was developed in the 50s, the chances of all of the people who know the origin story being dead goes way up!
vlogbrothers the loopy D makes me think it was supposed to resemble a castle or a magic wand being twirled
The plot thickens.
but.. walt disney was still alive in the 50's, so doesn't this mean that it actually is just one of the ways he decided to write his name one day?
First, I loved your video and appreciated the update. Second, maybe I drank the Disney Kool-Aid early as a child, but I have never thought the D looked weird. It looks like a stylized cursive D to me. I even wrote my own last name (Davis) using this type of D in middle school. (Didn't everyone experiment with signing their names different ways in middle school?)
vlogbrothers I just happen to notice the loopy D is what you'd get if you were to overlap the original D with a crucifix or plus sign... This is about as close to a conspiracy theory as you can get, so it's probably coincidental... Though you'd think they would think really carefully about the design of their logo. I'm intrigued.
As a child I always thought it was a ‘G’ and it took me sitting down in front of the logo with the express purpose of seeing a ‘D’ for me to finally see it that way. I had to force my brain to understand the logo
I still don't see the letter it's supposed to be, and I'm a grown ass adult.
same, and now I still have to do that- when looking at it normally I'm just like "ah yeah, weird backwards Disney G"
Literally bro
Yeah, me too
That happened to me but with the y, I couldn't see it as anything other than a p until I focused on it, the D was always fine
This is so much more interesting than I expected it to be. -John
Very yes
I find anything related to Disney to be fascinating.
Disney history in itself is extraordinarily fascinating. I started studying it back in high school for fun and it led me to such an appreciation for the company to the point that I was a cast member for about 4 years. Keep searching, there are so many amazing things regarding disney history. :)
vlogbrothers ...could be the motto of Complexly.
HI JOHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you guys both and thanks to both of you helping me survive highschool with crash course
I always thought it was a backwards G...
I always thought it was Disnep, not Disney until the Internet...
backwards gisney movies
@@j07harper5 you thought the Disney logo said Disnep until the internet told you otherwise, but still knowing the logo was attached to the Disney company? Are you serious?
@@rachelc3535 I thought Disney was called Disnep, until the Internet told me that was Disney
Omfg SAME
So glad I wasn’t the only person who had no clue this was a D growing up
We going to backwards Gisney land
I was way more confused about the y. For so long, I thought it was Disnep
😂😂😂💯💯💯
same, i always looked at it like it was a symbol or something lmao
I thought it was a G
For my entire childhood I thought the D was a G and still read it as Disney not Gisney
It was like being brainwashed. The D vs G thing was my Picard's "There are four lights!"
Amen, exactly
It's probably because of its cursive style. Walt Disney himself was said to be passionate about calligraphy. Apparently, the letter 'D's in the various Disney logos are based on Disney's own signatures, which also changed over the years.
Absolute same.
From a designers mind, I'm thinking that they wanted the loop to fill in the negative space of the D so that there isn't a perceived gap between walt and disney. They likely knew that the purely aesthetic choice wouldn't impede people's ability to recognize the brand.
SamVetica My thoughts exactly
YES!! ^^^THIS!
Thank you.
Also from a specifically logo design perspective, having a really weird unique form of a letter in your logotype makes your logo more unique and recognizable. The D alone can be taken out of the logotype and used as a logo unto itself, as it has been. If they had had a more usual kind of D, that might not work so well.
I do this myself with the "F" in my signature (my name is Forrest), which has evolved over the years into something only loosely connected to a usual cursive capital F, and which I use as my personal logo.
They could have continued the loop, though, and then it would be more legible AND it wouldn’t have empty space.
I can sort of agree, making a stylistic choice to break the connection from the letter is fine, purposeful and can be useful for creating symbolism. The problem that I have with it is that the break from traditional letter-forms created a closer connection to a different letter, G, instead of being completely stylized away from any letter at all. It would have been much better if they had found a way to make it resemble a G less, even if it pushed to closer into the realm of symbolic shapes. As a child I always thought it was a G, and to this day I still struggle to make myself see a D because of the long connection I thought it had to a G. It's a little too late to fix it though, I think. While other well known companies have successfully redesigned their logo, such as AT&T, Pepsi, etc., I think Disney would have a harder time keeping a connection between their current branding and a new logo without keeping that ****ed D.
My Gran used to tell me that 'you need to change your signature all the time so people can't forge it'. I always assumed all the older gens did that.
But if you change your signature all the time, then anything would plausibly look like your signature. That would make it easier to forge. Just like old people who always refuse to use their debit card pin because someone might hack the store and steal it.
@@daemonCaptrix lmao is that actually a thing, the PIN thing? Is that why the US is like 15 years behind the rest of the developed world in adopting chip and pin? Cos the entire point of it is that it's _way_ more secure, and that it means if you lose your card or someone steals it, they can't get a penny of your money because they don't have the PIN. The technology that goes into keeping it encrypted and impossible to hack is pretty fascinating, Computerphile did a video on it, it's pretty much impossible to hack, the only way to get people's PINs is to make your own machine and trick people into putting their card into that instead, because you're not gonna be able to hack one of the legitimate machines.
When I heard Americans only adopted PINs for their cards like 2 years ago I was shocked. What on earth did you do instead all this time, like sign your name or something? Meaning anybody could easily steal all your money by just loosely copying your signature on the back of the card
@@duffman18 I think you don't have to even "loosely copy" the signature. I worked as a cashier for a while (in Germany) and there was nothing we really could or were supposed to do if the signature didn't match the one on the card except look at the person weirdly. And then they'd say "Oh I got that card back in high school, so my signature's different now."
@@meerkatnip892 I've been known to draw little pictures over the signature line on the pinpad instead of signing. No one ever cared.
@@meerkatnip892 Wait it was store policy to look at them weirdly?
The word "Disney" sounds so weird now.
Especially after hearing it that many times in 4 minutes.
Ayy, big fan of your work!
Disney Disney Disney. Disney and more Disney.
Woah, subbed to both
There's a term for this experience! It's called "semantic satiation." :-D
Growing up; I knew it was a “D” but also thought of it as a “G” or some weird letter all it’s own
The signature at 0:39 looks almost exactly like the logo tbh
I even think the one on 0:31 is pretty similar to the logo... you just have to move the loop a bit and voila
Except the Walt part. And...but that D though!
Hank, just as you were saying the word "magic" at the end of the video, it occurred to me that when the 'D' is isolated, it really looks like a staff with a whirl of magic something swirling around it. I wonder if this represents an intentional choice to modify Disney's signature in a way that makes the 'D' more symbolic of that magic. That would fit with my experience of logo designers trying to cram more symbology than can be discerned into a logo.
It also looks a /lot/ like a treble clef, which is something I thought about a bunch when making this. Yeah, it looks kinda like a wand with some magic around it...for sure.
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After looking at it a few times, it's almost certainly a reference to how one draws a head. A vertical and a horizontal line, and the horizontal line bends away at both sides to imply depth. My guess is it's a callback to their heritage as an animation studio.
I had the same thought at the exact same moment.
+ I had the exact same thought for the exact same reason.
This is incredible, until I was probably 13 or so, I couldn’t actually even see the D in that character. It’s amazing that a company targeted at children wouldn’t make it more legible. But it’s iconic, so maybe any child even one who can’t read can identify that symbol. Like how the McDonalds M is iconic enough that even if you don’t know it’s an M or what it stands for, you still know what it means..
I mean, I still don't really see the D. I know that it's there...I can make myself see it, but on your average viewing, it's just a spiral with a slash in it.
Same, I always saw it as either a random spiral or a G facing the wrong direction. I still can't really see it as a D, only when I really concentrate on it, but even then it only works for a few seconds. I'm not a fan of how it looks, it kinda irritates me when I look at it for too long (& think about it too much).
vlogbrothers it usually takes me a minute to see it, but I’ve just internalized that it is a D and accepted it’s weirdness.
perhaps it's intentionally NOT a letter? perhaps it's there as a picture, like the nike swoosh, the three stripes for adidas, the cancer/aids ribbons, the pride flag, or any flag, really....it's a symbol that speaks volumes more, and faster, than a word or phrase could.
This, and it's doubly inaccessible for those with dyslexia. But it's testament to their branding isn't it, that we collectively just read it as 'Disney' even though it doesn't actually spell out 'Disney' all that well
Which honestly has to be a calculated corporate marketing move. Smart man, that Eisner dude, but hmm :/ guess we now know Disney was always going to be a monopoly monstrosity
it will always be ''Đisnep'' to me
That would be pronounced thisnep, like the TH in ”that”
same
Yeah that Y is weird.
𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓷𝓮𝔂 𝓫𝓪𝓭
Really the D? The p was always the main thing. Always called it frikkin Disnep back then.
Same
Ok, I'm calling the company Walt Gisnep from now on, lol
Gisney, you got it ... ruclips.net/video/YqnyJcvIMH0/видео.html
I used to think it said Gisnep when I was little 😂
Waly Gisnep
Waly Disnep
Is it bad I read that as Walt Disney before I went back and looked again?
You did an incredible job on this. So interesting, so in-depth, but so quick. 10/10
@Coley Durham you know about the controversy
I didn’t understand that the Disney logo was a “d” until I was 17 years old. It’s ok though hopefully all this student debt I’m racking up means I can continue my revelations on such things.
am I the only one who doesn't have problem with D and Y? I never saw anything other than those two letters... on the other hand T looks more like Y to me
WalY Disney
N M thank you!
Same here. D i s n e y.
"This isn't a D" - uhm, yes it is. "This isn't a Y" - uhm, yes it is. I guess people aren't too used to more unusual shapes or hand lettering or something. But what's so special, really? Is it the vertical stroke in the D that doesn't extend all the way that makes them confused or what is happening?
@@fheedpexx9267 This is late but it is probably because they have seen the logo since they were young and were less able to read and have associated the "D" to be something completely arbitrary instead of a d. It would look weird to picture it as a d once they learn it is a d, since the whole letter would be off center and there would be a large line going through it horizontally. Every time i see it, i have to put conscious effort into making the "D" a D.
Maybe it's a millennial thing?
Younger generations are no longer being taught cursive and that is a classic cursive D.
If one has never used or read cursive then one might not recognise the cursive lettering used in the logo.
@@QlueDuPlessis Millenials are mid-20's through late 30's, we learned cursive in school and had to use it when writing papers. The Disney D still looks weird because that's not how we were taught to do a cursive D.
And yes, the generation after us, Gen Z, is learning cursive too, just later than before. I'm 31, I learned it in 3rd grade. My 13yo brother learned it in 6th grade.
Ok but wait I’ve never looked at the D as a “D” and more of a backwards G
I find it really difficult to see it as a D
I always thought the D looked like a knight's helmet looking to the left (their right). My mind clearly connected it with castles and princesses. Great video, Hank!
I'd love to see more investigations of odd questions on this channel if that's something you guys are wanting to do
Former Cast Member with the answer, Hank. Win Smith. who drew the Mickey Mouse Comics for Newspapers, always signed the comics as Walt Disney. Eisner, growing up reading those comics, used the Walt Disney signature that most represented in his youth, those comics. The signature in the late 1960s included the iconic 'Disney D' that became the company brand in 1984.
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I googled the name "Win Smith" because I vaguely remembered it (hello fellow former cast member!), and I found an article about Win Smith and, more importantly, the replacement Mickey comic artist/writer Floyd Gottfredson - who took over after Ub Iwerks left, Walt quit and Smith resigned in the 30s - and who did the Mickey comic for 45 years. His personal signature resembles The Classic Disney D a whole lot, with a lot of the same kinds of swooshes so it seems like he might be it and not Win Smith (who mostly inked the comic when it was still being drawn by Ub Iwerks)? :) I may be wrong though! Interesting stuff!
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When I was little I didn’t realise the G was backwards,
and I ended up believing, that to differentiate the movies from Disney land, they made Gisney movies and Disney land (btw I’d only heard about Disneyland and never been)
Wen I was little I did not register that as a “D” at all. I knew it said Disney but didn’t even think about why it looked like a “G”.
What I’ve learned: Walt does not have the iconic D I once thought he had.
Taylor Kennedy came here for this, was not dissatisfied
Of course Walt's D isn't nearly as big as he led us to believe...
Also, Hank Green is obsessed with the D.
i didn’t realize it was a D until i was about 14. Just didn’t understand why it was a backwards G. Oops. Which is why i love and appreciate this vid lol.
I am so glad I am not the only one!!
Yup, same!
Exactly. This video was so validating.
I started cheering at that opening. I never knew everyone else saw Gisnep as a kid too!
Gisney ruclips.net/video/YqnyJcvIMH0/видео.html
Good ol' Waly Gisnep
Just a thought I had. Walt Disney was dyslexic and I bet part of the reason for his wide variety of signatures is probably because he also had dysgraphia, which affects handwriting. I am dyslexic and have dysgraphia and no matter how hard I try to have an awesome signature, it turns out different every single time. Great video!
I always figured it was to make it look more "iconic" it's Disney's D and everyone will know it. Which, I think we do
BRUH!!! I grew up with the exact same thing, I thought it was a backwards G and couldn’t figure it out either. I had no idea this happened to anyone else!!!
omegadan I thought I was alone in this too.
As a DisneyTuber and lover of design, this video was so fascinating and entertaining! I think most are like myself and thought it was a weird “G” growing up, now it almost transcends even being a letter.
Zip-a-Dee-Doo Disney As a kid I asked my parents why they put a “G” in the name.
same I was always confused about the "backwards G" up until an embarrassingly old age
me too!!
"Zip-a-dee-doo" definitely marks one of their lower points as a company...
same
This is one of the most interesting videos I’ve ever seen. Is that bad?
No! That's good!
We need more videos like this!!
Growing up,I always just read it DISNEY,not paying attention,but when I really look at it, it's WEIRD I can't describe
I see 3 6's.
D is a reverse 6
Dot above the I is a 6
The Y at the end is a 6
*shrugs*
But Disney is "Wholesome".
I don't know why I feel that this is oddly the best explanation. Also, one can say Disney is wholesome but it is also a humongous business with its tentacles in various media outlets.
The w is two 6’s so it’s 66666 lol
I think they might want the D to look a bit like a magic wand, with the line in the middle being the wand and the swirls on the outside being the magic stuff coming from it
Sometimes a D is just a D.
Unless it's a G
Oh that makes sense!
Actually I can see that now that you've said it
That makes total sense, I could see their design team pitching that idea & using it ..look at all the hundreds of logos out there that do similar things (Amazon, baskin robins, fed ex) & so on
As a former cast member, this video made me very happy and makes me miss working at Walt Disney World.
Meredith S. You worked for Disney?!?!?!?!?!
Mishi Kaur I worked at Disney for a year and I did the Disney College Program
Meredith S. That's so cool!!!! You are lucky
Fun fact: my great uncle lost two fingers building the Swiss Family Robinson House in the Florida Disney land.
That's actually fascinating.
My great grandfather lost 6 fingers on a sawmill... Is that magic in any way?
And here I was, wanting to enjoy it, but the one opportunity I had, it was closed for renovations or something. I give my thanks to your great uncle. It looked great. :)
I'm not certain that falls in the category of "fun" fact...but it certainly is interesting!
that’s insane! i was walking on it not too long ago. bless him.
But you all realize that the "D" is a simplified version of Tinkerbell's head silhouette, and it's Tinkerbell that flies across Cinderella's castle in the logo. Right?
EDIT: No, this does not refer to that "mandela effect" notion that Tinkerbell dots the "i" in the blue logo. The capital "D" is the head and bangs of Tinkerbell, and the dot of the "i" is Tinkerbell's bun. It's one of those hidden design things like the FedEx arrow.
it actually does look like that!!
I don't know, can't see it
I went to Disney world at 21. It felt wrong and creepy then. My friend told me why I felt weird is because there's an entire underground city below Disney world. Not comforting!
"Let's get drunk around the world." Is a very bad idea.
That thing flying over the castle isn't a star, man. Unless it's explicitly something else (like the little spaceship light in Lilo and Stitch) that's Tinker Bell.
Yep it's Tinkerbell, he also messes up calling it Cinderella's castle, it's actually the silhouette of Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty castle. Though the 'When you wish upon a star' tune playing does probably confuse people.
FinalFantasyFan92 When you wish upon a star is from Pinocchio, why would that confuse people into thinking it's from Cinderella?
nospeedboundaries That’s not what I meant. I was trying to make two separate points which kinda blurred in to one. Point one, Some people think it’s a star because the song is singing about a star. Second point, he calls it Cinderella’s castle, it’s not. If you’ve been to Disneyland you will know it’s the silhouette of Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty castle.
The castle in the intro is a mixture of both the Cinderella castle in WDW and the sleeping beauty castle in Disneyland.
The 'new' CG one is, the 80s and 90s one is purely Sleeping Beauty castle.
Took me a little too long to realize this isn’t a super carlin brothers video
Will actually, this does seem like the exact kind of video they'd make lol
It's also really similar to the channel Today I Found Out.
True it is pretty similar to today I found out as well.
YES ME TOO
you can literlly see and hear hank green
I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS A WEIRD BACKWARDS "G"! Then someone pointed it out to me in college and it like, destroyed my entire world for awhile.
CrazedsHideout I was gonna post about that. when i was little I knew it was a D, but thought it was. G. lol
People are stupid.
This is how I feel about the B in the old “the Bay” logo (now usually branded HBC). It looks like a G. It makes sense I. The old Hudson’s Bay Company cursive. But just the B looks so weird
The super polished modern logo can also be found in the theme parks and even the worlds fair in the 60s. If you look at historical photos of the "It's a Small World" ride at the 1964 worlds fair, you'll find a very modern looking "Presented by Walt Disney" sign complete with a loopy D!
You had me at, "That D though!"
Rachel Harrison it was pretty far in the video.
0:40: "Loopy 'D'."
She likes the D
*_-that's that she said-_*
It's Walt's signature.
Edit: Welp. There goes that.
if I'm honest, a lot of those logos made his D look very similar (though not identical) to that one. looks like they took a nice loopy walt logo and then had a graphic artist give it a face lift.
Awsamazing Eden Lol next time actually edit the comment...
Thanks for the interesting information! If you're bummed that this video isn't 15 minutes long you could make a hankschannel video expounding on it. I know I would watch it and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people would too
Yep! +
+ More Disney rambling, please!
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The lgogo doesn't need to be read, just recognized. Now the D on it's own can already represent Disney. They basically created their own letter and made it universally recognizable as "Disney". It's brilliant marketing, even when done by mistake
This was the first vlogbrothers video i had watched around a few months back. It’s a really good video!
I have been a hardcore Disney fan since I was 13 (almost 10 years) and I really never thought about the fact that Walt's OG signature were never QUITE the same as the logo. THIS is the quality content I subscribed for. Thank you
I always thought it was Tinkerbell flying over the castle. Not a shooting star. Tinkerbell flies over the castle at the parks.
In the Wonderful World of Disney TV program Tinkerbell flies over the castle and cast fireworks. So your not far off.
It looks like magic going around a wand.
You are a wizard harry
I never thought of it as a letter at all growing up. It was always just a weird shape to me that I couldn't categorize, but I always knew it meant Disney. I think the weirdness of it makes it so distinguishable and exclusive to the brand that it can't be mistaken for anything else.
For all of my childhood I didn’t get that it was a D, and I can remember when it clicked in my brain that it was supposed to be one. But when I told someone this they just laughed so I thought it was only me that thought it was some weird G thing that somehow helped spell Disney. Thank you hank for teaching me more things every day. Wait until this comes up on TikTok
Growing up I was under the impression that it was supposed to look like a treble cleft though I have no why someone would do that
NerdGirl Same I think it looked like some kind of musical note to me.
Maybe there’s some validity to that idea.. maybe the design of the D is meant to evoke the idea of music because Disney, the man and the company, compose masterpieces in film like the great composers did for music? certainly the Disney D for me has always struck me with a sense of creativity and wonder, and that can’t just be the association it has with the brand itself.. the D design seems to have it there innately somehow.. it’s a minimalistic and truly iconic symbol
after a minute i was like "this feels like if Lindsay Ellis did a defunctland video"
LOL
Alex
Wow that's because they did 3:55
Can't be. Not enough feminism in it.
alexandra galici, yeah I'm a classic liberal/ libertarian and I agree.
alexandra galici I actually watched her when she started out on TGWTG years ago. Once she went elitist, she totally lost me.
The "y" bothers me a lot more.
Y?
It looks like a greek phi
For me it's the D, it looks like a backwards 6 with a line in it.
Same, I thought it was spelt Disnep for the LONGEST time
@@heffalumpatemyhoney that was the case for me too 👍
An intern in the 80s was prolly tasked with cutting together previously made assets and some years before that some animator was just told to whip up a Walt Disney without copying an old one
What is really interesting is the Y in Disney. This is actually shaped like the Greek letter Phi which is connected with the Golden Ratio. The spiral in the letter D is the symbol for creation. The I is dotted by the Greek letter Theta commonly used in geometry for angle.
This is the hard hitting research we need this week.
"Oh yeah, I love backwards-Gisney movies!"
Gisnep......
Joel G I thought it was Gisney for the first 10 years of my life
Looks like a quickly scrawled Disney to me. My quickly scrawled cursive Ds and ys look like that.
...land
yeah, maybe when they began to be run by another person it made sense to have the company image changed from the "signature from a real person" design choice to a company logo, especially with that castle theme, is like you're overseeing the legacy of walt disney himself
I heard a story from someone who worked at Disney Studios years ago that Walt’s secretary could sign his name perfectly and did on a lot of stuff.
this is something i think about all the time!! there was one day that i just looked at the D completely differently and i was kind of mind blown
"BUT THAT D THO!" I've only had problem with the "y". Also your hair looks nice in this video.
M Hilmy Fauzi same! That d looks like d to me but always read that y as p
Took me years to realize it was a "y".
Yeah, I remember thinking it was Disnep
"none of them have a D like the loopy D"?? There were like four examples in the videos you showed that have ones similar.
It is probably a stylized version of that.
I was just about to comment that. Clearly they made the loop bigger so it reached the inside but there are a lot of them that are very very similar.
I was also going to comment something similar, I don't really understand this video
That was the point. The D stylized as we know it today was not fully fleshed out until the early 80's (or possibly 50's by Hank's pinned comment). There WERE many examples that were close but none exactly like it until it was stylized.
I mean... sure, but it's still a pretty pointless video since we DO know where it comes from. It's a stylized version of one of the D's he wrote. The way he says it implies that it was completely made up by someone outside of Disney...
I noticed that too. To be honest, the video says it doesn't look like the letter "D", but I definitely think it does. It's just that the "rounded" portion loops back into the interior. One of the examples, early in the vid, of Walt's signature (the one that was for someone named Emil) looks almost identical except was missing the interior part.
“Gisnep”
That’s what it looks like to me, and what I thought as a child for a long time. I knew it was called “Disney,” but the letters read “Gisnep” in my head. :l
I love that the video doesn't answer the question of the title at all, but still manages to be entertaining x)
When I was in third grade a friend of mine told me that the Disney logo was made like that to comprise three 6's; the loopy 'D' was a backwards six, the loopy dot over the 'I' was a six, and so was the loopy 'Y'
Mario37519 Whats Da Dabil
Mario37519 Oh Okay!
That swoopy swirl always looked kind of like a treble clef to me.
Wow this is so interesting! I grew up in Florida and went to Disney very often as a kid, and it took my childhood mind so long to interpret the Disney “D” as the letter “D”. I always just recognized it as the Disney logo... a unique Disney swirl that was part of the magic, which I guess means it was working! Thanks Hank (and all of his helpers) this interesting research find!
I feel vindicated, I asked my parents why Disney used a G when I was a kid, and they acted like I was a fool
Wait a minute...
What if the swirl in that D represents Tinker Bell flying around a line, being symbolic toward a person or building, and the swirl is her pixie trace? Or what if it's just an abstract way of writing a D?
Hank is stealing the John hairdo.
The puff!
The puff isn't stealable. It's a different being, traveling, learning, growing.
Am I weird if I think the Disney D look like a D?
Rob Sorbo Same. It’s so clearly a D to me.
It's clearly a D to me now, but I know when I was a child it confused me
Nope.
I was confused on how it was a D, I always wrote cursive Ds, then it hit me, instead of starting from the top and go down, write from middle loop around and than the l, it made my day, I had spent hours trying to figure it out for my signature
Maybe it's because we associate it with the word "Disney" so we subliminally see a "D." I wonder if someone who has never heard of Disney would find it confusing.
Hey I voted for that video😁
Mohamed Nasir me too!
Me too! :-)
There's also the General Mills G, which as a kid thought was a drawing of a pitcher of milk (to pour on General Mills cereal).
As someone who watched a lot of Disney movies, the letter D in Disney did throw me for a loop (the "y" in Disney didn't throw me for a loop). But you know what _other_ logo through me for a loop? The old "Holiday Inn" logo (specifically, the version that came out in the mid-80s). I misread that as "Holiday Gnn".
gisnepland doesn't sound as good
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Sounds Scandinavian, actually
I remember the moment that the Disney “D” from the logo finally looked like an actual letter D, it blew my mind! As a kid, I looked at it more like a logo than a signature so mentally I just thought of it like an amalgamation of the number 6 and letter G and never gave it much thought. I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one to have a fascination with that iconic signature/letter.
I always thought it said Gisnep als a child
This is missing the relevant discussion that the D/G character in the logo also resembles a musical clef, and since Disney is closely associated with musicals, it's branding reinforces that.
IM NOT THE ONLY ONE! I always thought the D in Disney was a lowercase "d" except for when it just looks like a fancy "G"
Tinfoil hat theory: Eisner changed it to look a bit like a flipped E for Eisner. (Granted my only evidence for this is the fact that it looks like a fancy flipped E).
aacsmiles D with a line through the middle would be E if the loop were broken. Weird last letter could plausibly be y or r. MY GOD, IT'S EISNER.
I thought it was a "G" until like 3 years ago. Also, I finally got to preorder _An Absolutely Remarkable Thing_ , also known as Hank's book, available September 25th! (I think)
Why would you think it was a G? Since when did Disney have a G in it? lol
LoquaciousLaners42 I thought it's was E.
"it's easy to make it read more clearly" sure, but this weird loopy D is also iconic and incredibly identifiable to a large, incredibly large, amount of people who grew up loving Disney. why change something that works? if that's the only reason they made it look so weird, i wouldn't even be slightly surprised.. but it'd also be nice if Disney would tell us why lol. is this something you need to disclose when you are copywriting or trademarking something? cos tbh i think that would be my first place to look for info on something like that.
The font for this D is probably the best font for interpreting a character as both upper and lower case
The D always looked like a D to me. His last name was French, originally D’Isney ( from Isney). Being half French it made sense to me. Always loved that logo
Is it fair to assume they made it distinctly not one of Walts signatures for legal reasons? This way they have full ownership over it and it wont go into public domain some years after his death
It's possible! There is a separate company (that is now a non-profit) that administers Disney's identity properties.
This sounds the most plausible, actually.
Interesting, I only watched this video as a Portsmouth FC fan as Michael Eisner has recently bought the club. One of his first noticeable changes? Amending the club logo just enough so that it no longer is the same as the city's coat of arms, for the purpose of protecting it for copyright and licensing. Could be a consistent MO here for Mr E
That's how I've ALWAYS written my cursive D's!! Before I learned cursive in school, I was obsessed with writing my name " like a big kid". I must have seen this version and assumed it was correct. #childofDisney
(It still is how I sign things today fyi as I have a D as the 1st letter of my last name)
So it isn't Gavison?
I feel like I was brain washed because I also kind of write my Ds like this lol. I just don't make the full loop. For me the loop part stops at the bottom, and the two lines don't connect. So it kinda looks like a fish hook on top of the vertical line.
I don't understand how you don't think that looks like a D. It's got some flair, sure, but it's a D. I think maybe you just looked at it too long and in that way that when you say a word enough times it starts to sound weird, this D started to look weird to you.
NotTheStatusQuo I had no idea it was a D until I was 13 years old, and only because somebody told me it was. Even then I had to stare at it for a minute to see it. A lot of people have had similar experiences it seems.
If I saw it for the first time ever as an adult maybe I would think that it 100% is just a weird, stylized D, but to a child, it reads more as a weird G, and I've never fully kicked that thought.
I think what you're thinking is that Hank made this because he thinks it just looks a bit weird, when in fact this is a case of thousands of children misreading the title of a comany specifically targeted towards children. Which is where a lot of people scratch their heads at the choice 😂
Where are you all from? As in, maybe it's a country-specific thing; the common cursive in some countries being closer to "that D tho" than in others. I'm from Germany, and except for the backwards swirl, "that D tho" is a perfectly fine D.
varana312 I'm from the US. It does resemble the cusive D I was taught in grade school, but I still never made the connection.
varana312 This is the cursive alphabet I was taught (it's repeated a few times in the picture because they're stickers for kids' desks).
www.walmart.com/ip/Handwriting-Without-Tears-017762-Cursive-Desk-Strips/360962085?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=1148&adid=22222222228000000000&wl0=&wl1=s&wl2=m&wl3=42423897272&wl4=pla-51320962143&wl5=9007349&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=112562587&wl11=online&wl12=360962085&wl13=&veh=sem
I never knew people thought it wasn't a D, as it was always obviously a 'D' to me (I honestly can't unsee it as a D either?). I'm from New Zealand and as some have pointed out here in the comments, maybe its a geographic thing?
It took me forever to realize that was a letter when i was young. I usually just saw that one D at the top spine of the VHS cover. When I figured it out when i was about 6 or 7 it was like an epiphany moment.
John: (mentions Michael Einser)
Me, a Defunctland fan: oooOOOHHH BOY!
John: Special thanks to Kevin from Defunctland
Me: WHAT
This iconic D looks like one of the seven dwarfs nose. In fact, I think that shape was use to do lots of noses...
It could also be a cartoon ear in a way
Hank the D looks like a G, that you for telling me I’m not the only one who thinks that D is weird.
When I was a kid I always thought the Y was a P and read it as "Disnep".
Simon Vin The happiest place on earth... Disnepland. Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
No it really doesn't, does it?
Mine when i was a kid, the 'D' letter was Q - dont know why it was that letter
Well the D isn't even really a D, so I think you're doing okay there. ;)
I read the D as a flipped G, not until a few years ago i was able to see it as a D
It seems pretty clear that the "D" was modified from the Disney signature that closely resembles the final logo, by removing the upper loop and making the lower one bigger. One loop is arguably more simple, clean and appealing than two as on the original.
I always thought it was made to resemble a Treble Clef because of all the emphasis on songs and singing in the early animated movies. It sort of felt similar to the way that the Guitar Center logo is equally unreadable.