Thursday, November 5, 2009

Terrorist Organization Logos

Terrorist groups, like any organization, need brand identities. With so many groups claiming credit for terrorist acts, and so many videotapes being put out featuring men in ski masks, it’s hard to keep track of which group committed what violent act. So terrorist organizations have logos. It recently occurred to me that someone had to actually design those logos. But how did they decide who gets to do it? Did the job go to whichever terrorist had a copy of Adobe Illustrator?

Stars


It occurs to me that “stars inside circles” is a subgroup of this category.


One Gun

Notice that there’s a little bit of overlap between this group and the last group. The last two “Stars” logos featured a gun, but I decided that the star motif was strong enough to keep them in the “Star” group. The first logo in this group has a star, too, but it’s small.

The bottom three logos are presented in the order they were designed, each inspired by the one before it.


Two guns crossed

Why settle for one gun, when you can have two?



Other weapons crossed

Guns are so barbaric. Here are some logos which feature blades instead.


Crossbones

White supremacists seem to prefer skulls over swords. Hey, haven’t I seen that Combat 18 logo somewhere before?



Animals with multiple heads

The SLA’s seven-headed cobra, below, was apparently taken from an ancient Sri Lankan symbol.



Other

What to make of the rest? I’m not sure what the Oromo Liberation Front logo is supposed to suggest. And that “EPB” logo doesn’t inspire terror at all. It looks like an Olympic team logo. I’ve never heard of the Creativity Movement before, and now I still have no idea what they stand for. What’s with the “W”?
Quick Disclaimer: I picked these terrorist groups from a list of designated terrorist organizations on Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_organisations

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