Sirens2.0010_Starbucks

Sirens2.0010_Starbucks

Terry Heckler, graphic designer of original "brown" logo-type, "The Starbucks Siren", 1971 (with subsequent modifications), based upon 16th-century Norse woodcut of a two-tailed mermaid.

Starbucks Coffee Company, the fast-growing, global coffee giant, founded in 1971, attributes its success in part to the "unique concept of [its] logo design". Much web-based information blurs the artist's narrative gain.
Heckler chose an icon that embodies charming enticement. "That early siren...was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself." [H. Schultz (1997), Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks built a company one cup at a time]

In classical mythology the Sirens were seductive singers who fatally distracted seafarers. Homer's Sirens caused sailors to forfeit their homecoming by distracting the men with a seductive song, individualized to the listener for maximum destructive effect — thus, the song for Odysseus appeals to his great feats at Troy and flatters him for his persistent desire to know all things. Odysseus cleverly arranges to survive the allure; he is the first to hear their song and live. When the Argonauts had survived the Sirens' song, Orpheus' singing saved ship and crew by drowning out the seduction. —— From late-Antiquity into modern times, Sirens have come to represent worldly temptations, allurements of the flesh. — The Starbucks "siren" (see right) is purposefully chosen for her seductive qualities; however, she is not a Siren.

Heckler's Starbucks Siren

Confusing explanations abound.
R. Holden in Forbes.com clarifies well. But I would add a sentence to Holden's piece: I would augment as italics below show: “Heckler started looking through old books for illustrations of sirens, sprites, water nymphs, mermaids. He settled on a mermaid. The earliest version of Heckler’s logo was brown and fierce-looking…"
M. Flandreau "Who is the Starbucks Siren" on Starbucks.com confuses issues somewhat but has nice graphics and historical overview.
S. Raghav, "Starbucks Logo — an overview of design, history, and evolution," Logo Design 23 Mar 2016 (accessed 15 Jan 2018) — the author fails to distinguish between mermaids and sirens.
in Wired.com is a pretty good article but goes farther afield.

In principle: Starbucks Siren began as a mermaid and morphed into a Siren. Mermaids and Sirens are similar — both are anthropomorphic female creatures whose seductions destroy mariners — but they are not technically the same. Sirens, classically, are avian creatures with female-human characteristics. Mermaids, from northern mythology, are piscine (fishlike) marine creatures. The Starbucks creation is interesting for many reasons, especially for the overt acknowledgement that she (i.e. the company's product) personifies charming entrapment.

A brief article in Brill's New Pauly clarifies that classical Sirens are different from the modern conception of them.
A model Reception Paper by R. Barr and R.T. Macfarlane is a bit longer, but quick and clear.

A couple of Victorian depictions of Sirens represent the many neo-classicizing view of the Sirens as sexualized threats to men: Armitage's "Siren" (1888) or Waterhouse's "Ulysses and the Sirens" (1891); Böcklin's comic conception (1875) of the Sirens' true wiliness is worth a laugh.