JOlson+-+logo

Blender logo - Graphic only http://www.blender.org/about/logo/

Blender uses a graphic - only logo, most likely because the Blender organization only makes one product, which is the Blender 3D modeling application, and the logo therefore doubles as the application icon, which are, as a rule, graphics. The target audience, therefore, is made up of digital 3D artists and independent video game designers and movie makers, as those are the people who would be downloading a free 3D modeling program in the first place. This is why the logo is abstract and streamline - it needs to catch the eye and send the right message to indie developers, the hipsters of the developer world, as well as creative people. Which it does - I think I count as both of those things and I really like the logo design. It's just looks cool and different.

Yahoo! logo - text only http://www.blender.org/about/logo/

Yahoo!'s newest logo is text only (the above image is two different renditions of the same logo). I think this is because they want it to look cleaner/newer/more up-to-date, or something? They change their logo all the time I don't even know anymore. But they always have text in their logo, because the word 'Yahoo!' is what's best known about them, along with having an exclamation point and being purple and white. I have a yahoo email account and I still don't actually know what yahoo does/is all about. But I've known about yahoo for most of my life because you don't forget the fact that there is actually a legitimate company out there with Yahoo! as their legitimate name. I'm not 100% sure who the target audience is, but I think it would be anyone who uses any of the many, many, MANY services that Yahoo! provides, which pretty much covers the entire internet. So maybe what they're going for is to look more like the other popular sites on the rest of the internet? It meets their needs because it HAS gotten them more attention, but mostly because they're getting a lot of criticism over it for some reason.

...I know absolutely nothing about Yahoo!.

Dell logo - combo http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dell_Logo.png

(I was actually able to find an explanation about this one, yay!) Dell does a combination of text and graphics. The graphic is the slanted E, and it represents the company founder's wish to 'turn the world on it's **E**ar'. It also employs a circle, to represent said world being turned on said **E**ar. The type is pretty simple, probably because it was meant to be recreated on millions of stickers and pieces of technology, sometimes on stickers, and sometimes on actual metal, and getting too complex would rack up costs and time for reproduction. Their audience is computer users everywhere, who all owe Dell for the fact that Dell is the company that's done the most to drive down costs of computer technology (another reason for the simple font, in my opinion).