If I asked you to close your eyes and think of Nike, Adidas, Apple – or any number of famous brands – you’d probably first visualize their logos. These unassuming images, stamped on products, websites, billboards and advertising all around the world are far more powerful than they appear at first glance.

With a heritage of well over a thousand years, we can look back to hallmarks, coats of arms and flags, to see why business logo designs are so deeply etched into cultures all around the world.

2017 is the year that SaaS companies will really take over.  So let’s take a look at how some top SaaS platforms have made sure that their logos will stay relevant within the shifting and ever-growing SaaS ecosystem.

Skeuomorphic Designs

Samsara and Datadog have opted for skeuomorphic logo designs – that is designs which clearly represent real-world objects. Some would argue that they are going against the grain, after Instagram and web browser Safari both peeled off their logos to go flat, less realistic options. But we like them! In fact, not following the crowd often makes you stand out.

Samsara was founded in 2015 and works in the sensor space, with a firm focus on cloud-hosted software solutions. Samsara’s simple stamp-like owl is striking against a plain white background.

Owls, in many cultures, represent wisdom (in others, they represent death  – but we’ll skip over that). In combination with the Sanskrit name “Samsara”, which refers to the eternal cycle of life and rebirth, they have a powerful brand, from which you could infer wisdom for eternity.

Datadog, ranked as one of the top 10 fastest growing companies in the US, has gone a little more cutesy. The skeuomorphic design features an enthusiastic dog, presenting you with what we imagine to be your skyrocketing quarterly revenues.

Unlike Samsara’s monochrome offering, this logo is presented in a soft violet – suggestive of luxury products and royalty. Whether this is intentional, or they just like purple is unclear, but it does stand out nicely among a slew of reds and blues.

Transparency, Color And Typography

World-leading communications SaaS platform Slack has an iconic logo which brings to mind hashtags with a fun twist. For business teams all around the world, thanks to its multiple colors and transparency, the logo does a good job representing the company’s playful customer service, as well as its functional communications offering.

Hubspot’s logo is a flat design, with the illusion of depth. The ‘O’ is a symbolic representation of networks and sharing, suggesting to the casual observer that the company provides a service connected with data sharing.. The bold typeface ITC Kabel is edgy, stylish yet friendly. It’s a mature and powerful logo for a company going into its 11th year of operations.

Related: The 10 Commandments of Typography

Showpad’s logo leaps off the page with a colorful sphere and elegant typeface. In business since 2011, the SaaS platform helps companies all over the world manage and “activate” their content.

The multi-colored swatch design, contained in a symmetrical pattern and combined with a playful font, suggests both creativity and careful organization. This clearly represents the mission of the company, which is to deliver “the most intuitive content activation & sales enablement platform to make content incredibly easy to find, present, share, and measure.”

Pancakes (Flat Design)

These logo designs are more practical – designed to be compatible and fast loading on a number of platforms.

Immediately recognisable as a cloud, the Salesforce logo text switches from regular to italic – giving importance to the power of the company’s CRM offering. It’s not the prettiest logo, nor is it the most innovative – but it certainly does a good job of telling you what the company does. And that’s a clever thing to do in a world saturated with mediocre branding efforts.

Twilio’s logo is bold, brash and aggressive. You can’t ignore the heavy set typeface, with each character standing alone, yet seemingly strong enough to withstand a hurricane. It does a better job than Salesforce at suggesting strength, but does lack in subtlety. The logo itself looks a bit like a shirt button, and is quite forgettable – though it is probably designed to look like a dial-pad.  The famous SaaS communications company enables software developers to make phone calls online as well as to send and receive text messages through APIs.

Those who know Trello, a leading SaaS project management solution, will instantly recognize the sleek representation of a workboard. That, in combination with a beautifully calligraphed typeface makes for a pleasing, if rather soft, logo.

The flat, plain blue is a little lacking in imagination, but it comes across as being both friendly and professional at the same time. Overall, it’s a strong effort from an incredibly successful and well-branded company.

Some SaaS Marketing blog designs have already made their mark on the world, and we love how they’re doing it. We think these designs will stand the test of time, and lay solid branding foundations for the future. So, here’s to a great and well-designed 2017!