Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, an American semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1982, used a distinctive logo featuring a stylized cypress tree in front of two overlapping circles. The mark was registered as a trademark with the description: “The mark comprises, in part, a stylized representation of cypress tree in front of two circles.”[1] The company placed the tree logo on every chip it sold, a practice confirmed by a Cypress product engineering manager.[2]
Design and History
The original Cypress logo combined a stylized tree silhouette with two intersecting circles that contained horizontal lines. A later trademark filing described the mark as “a design of a tree with two circles in the background with horizontal lines in them, shown to the left of ‘CYPRESS PERFORM’.”[3] The wordmark included the tagline “PERFORM” beneath the company name, with a line separating the two elements.
In 2017, Cypress introduced a new logo as part of a broader brand transformation it called “Cypress 3.0.” The company described this as the first major change to its brand identity in its 35-year history.[4] The new identity was unveiled at the Embedded World trade show in March 2017, where the company also launched its “We Live for Problems” branding campaign.[5] The rebranding accompanied a strategic shift toward system-level solutions, microcontrollers, and wireless connectivity, following the acquisitions of Spansion and Broadcom’s wireless IoT business.[6]
The new logo replaced both the existing Cypress and Spansion logos on packaging, with the transition fully implemented by July 24, 2017.[7] The updated identity incorporated the tagline “Embedded In Tomorrow,” which was registered as a trademark by Cypress Semiconductor Corporation.[8]
Meaning and Symbolism
The tagline “Embedded In Tomorrow” was not merely a slogan but a statement of how Cypress operated, guiding its product portfolio decisions and business strategy integration.[5] The company described its brand values as fearless, forward-looking, reliable, and fast, with the brand promise of creating solutions that can sense, connect, learn, and respond.[5]
Observers noted that the change from “PERFORM” to “Embedded in Tomorrow” reflected Cypress’s strategic repositioning from a product-focused company to one emphasizing broader solutions.[6] The earlier tree-and-circles mark was described by one industry publication as unusually artistic for a semiconductor company, though the company itself never publicly documented a specific symbolic meaning for the tree design.[9]
In April 2020, Infineon Technologies completed its acquisition of Cypress, and the Cypress brand was subsequently phased out in favor of Infineon’s identity.[10]
Logo Index is an independent educational archive covering logos, visual identities and graphic design history. All trademarks and brand assets remain the property of their respective owners.
