Recently a poster on Reddit stumbled onto a curious point from a 1989 book named “Trademarks & Symbols of the World”. It just so happens to contain a logo mark that exactly replicates the current Airbnb logo.
There’s no reason to think this was premeditated as the shape is rather basic and easy to recreate. But the odds are simply astounding!
You can see this in the picture below. Airbnb’s doppleganger is located in the third row, 2nd in from the edge(labeled as #36):
A Redditor tracked down the source of the original logo from the 1989 book copy. It was originally designed by a Japanese designer Akisato Ueda for a movie drive-in theater named Azuma. This dates back to 1975 but it’s unclear when Azuma would have closed down or ceased using this logo.
This does make sense, as the Trademarks book was written by a Japanese designer named Yasaburo Kuwayama.
You can actually buy a copy of this book right from Amazon if you’re interested to check it out.
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