Dansk's first logo was designed and hand-drawn by Jens H. Quistgaard in 1954. He also designed Dansk's very first products – and hundreds more over the years.

The family of four ducks represented a unified family of products. The three wavy water lines signify the three major canals of Copenhagen, Denmark's capital city, where it all began.

Dansk continued to grow, on the premise that every object needed for the top of the table could be beautiful as well as useful. Many of Quistgaard's Dansk designs became part of the permanent collections of the Louvre, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Quistgaard was born on April 23, 1919, in Denmark. His father was a sculptor who trained him in the art, and Quistgarrd started carving his own toys from scrap wood, a practice he continued with his own children. He requested and received a forge and anvil for blacksmithing, instead of a bicycle, as a Christmas present when he was 14. His first museum showing was at the Charlottenberg Museum, which displayed when he was 15-years old a set of hand-forged knives he had created He later worked as an apprentice at the studio of silversmith Georg Jensen under Just Anderson, which was interrupted by World War II, when he served in the Danish resistance movement.

A teak and stainless steel design for a fork and knife which Quistgaard had designed and forged by hand were put on display in 1954 at a museum in Copenhagen, which he had created because he couldn't find anything available for sale that he liked enough to purchase. American Ted Nierenberg was on a tour of Europe and spotted the flatware when he visited the museum. Nierenberg tracked down Quistgaard and convinced him that the design could be mass produced, leading to the creation of Dansk International Designs. From the mid-1950s until the 1980s, Quistgaard created designs for Dansk from his studio in Copenhagen.

In 1956, Quistgaard designed the Kobenstyle cookware line of enameled cookware, which were both functional and visually attractive, able to be brought from the kitchen to the table, with its handles serving as its own trivet. By 1958, Nierengard and Quistgaard had expanded Dansk's wares to include teak magazine racks and stools, stoneware casseroles and salt and pepper shakers, and flatware with split cane handles, with The New York Times that year as "creating a stir" as "some of the most popular accessories found in American homes".

He was known for his elegant but functional designs, created by using and combining materials such as exotic woods and stainless steel, as well as for his use of enameled steel in brilliant colors. He was recognized with the Lunning Prize in 1954 and won six gold medals at the Milan Trienalle. By 1982, he had created more than 2,000 different designs of dinnerware, glassware and items for the home.