I know that gasoline is dirty. That oil comes from the ground only after being sucked forcibly by gigantic insect looking drills that pump all night and day and create a blight on the landscape. That gas stations are usually pretty ugly places where you really only go because if you didn't, you couldn't go anywhere else.

I know all of these things. But every time I look at this logo, all of that knowledge threaten to fall right out of my head.

Whenever I see this logo, oil derricks pistoning against a hazy sky are replaced by vast fields of green, lined by rows of sunflowers gently nodding their heads in the breeze.

Whenever I see this logo, I start thinking of warm summer days, of taking a blanket out to a warm meadow somewhere and lying down for a nap under the warm golden light of a friendly sun.

Of course, I immediately reprimand myself for such ridiculous thoughts and remind myself that the soft-focus images of my imagination have nothing to do with reality at all.

Any time I question whether branding really works, I think about this logo.

About the fact that, in the .00303 seconds it takes to catch myself, this image has already made hundreds of associations in my brain, all of them pleasant.

And I think about how, when given the choice of two gas stations on the same corner, I'll pick the one with this logo.

Not because I think they are any different or better than the competition.

But because it feels good to stand by my car and daydream about green fields and sunny summer days while the gas meter whirs industriously behind me.