Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just weird. But of all thes symbols in designer's toolkit, a mountain is the one I love the most. So 2026 has been a good year so far.
Back in June, I wrote about Alpes 2030's Winter Olympics logo, whose radiating lines converge into a glowing point. Lovely. Two months later, Vermont's hand-lettered wordmark smuggled a range of peaks into its 'm'. They join some memorable recent releases, including the NHL's Utah Mammoth and a newly mountainous Mountain Dew from 2025.
None of these designs, I should clarify, are at all alike. But whenever I see a designer reach for a mountain, it reminds me exactly why this symbol has such a hold on me.
A simple symbol
Part of the appeal is sheer simplicity. Yet for a shape that's little more than a triangle, it carries a huge amount of weight and meaning. The ideas of permanence, aspiration, adventure, reaching the top, are all nestled within its three sides.
No wonder, then, that the mountain has a long history of popping up in logos. The North Face's quarter-circle is an abstract homage to Half Dome in Yosemite. Patagonia's jagged, colourful skyline is modelled on Mount Fitz Roy in the southern Andes. Coors Light's mountain is Wilson Peak in Telluride, Colorado.
Paramount's star-ringed peak was reputedly inspired by Ben Lomond in Utah, where founder W.W. Hodkinson grew up. And Prudential has been selling financial stability via the Rock of Gibraltar for well over a century. (Yes, technically that's a massive rock rather than a mountain, but we all know what we mean).
Why specificity lands
By the way, have you noticed something? None of these mountains are generic, they're all specific. And for me, that's where the real magic lies.
The most famed example of this is Toblerone. For decades, its logo featured the Matterhorn, with a bear hidden in the negative space; a nod to Bern, "City of Bears". But then in 2023, the company moving some production out of Switzerland, and Swiss rules restrict the use of national symbols on products not made there. So the logo had to change.
As a result, the famous peak has been swapped for a more generic mountain. The new design is fine, but sadly, it's quite generic. Toblerone will no doubt coast on deep-rooted brand awareness for many years to come, but in the long term? I think it's a problem.
Why this matters
Those recent logos I mentioned earlier understood that lesson. The Utah Mammoth's primary logo, for instance, is wonderfully specific. The Wasatch Mountain Range and snow-capped peaks form the beast's crown, with the shape of Utah subtly embedded in the mountain silhouette.
Vermont's wordmark works in a similar way, just more loosely. The moon in its 'o' rises over Camel's Hump, a real peak you can go and stand beneath on any autumn evening. Meanwhile, Mountain Dew, after 15 years as 'Mtn Dew', has leaned into its heritage with a mountain backdrop that calls to mind 20th century travel posters.
Alpes 2030 is an exception, to be fair: as I noted at the time, this abstract logo could represent almost any peak on Earth. But even here, the colour palette pulls it back to a real place, with its pinks and reds drawn from the alpenglow that washes over the Alps at sunrise and sunset.
Why does this matter? I think it's because, in a world of AI generation, a mountain is one of the most tangible things you can put in a logo.
You can't fake the Wasatch Range. It's just there, and it's been there for a very long time. As the Japanese saying goes, kuni yaburete sanga ari – "the country may have fallen, but the mountains and rivers remain."
