From the Nike swoosh to the Twitter fledgling, contemporary society is awash in logos, trademarks, and graphics of all sorts to sell things and promote stuff. Amid all of this branding, it’s easy to forget that every seemingly impersonal, corporate-sanctioned logo has, at its core, a human behind it: Whether designed by a person or a committee, the greatest logos are not just tokens of capitalism but reflections of someone’s creativity, imagination, and possibly even heart.

In the case of the Gerber baby, the distinction between the commercial and the personal is even less clear than usual. For some 94 years, the world-famous sketch of an inquisitive-looking infant with an adorable cowlick has helped secure consumer loyalty in baby food and other products produced by Gerber, but behind it are two uniquely American stories: artist Dorothy Hope Smith, who sketched out the charcoal drawing in response to a contest sponsored by the company, and her subject, Ann Turner Cook, who, unknowingly, posed for it when she was not even 6 months old.