Whilst logo designs are, in theory, all different and unique, you will find that most belong to one of the following 3 groups; typographic logo design,graphical logo design, illustrative logo design.

Typographic Logo Design
A typographic logo design is one that is defined as text/font (company name) only, with no accompanying decorative graphic that sits next to or within the text.

A typographic logo can still be classed as typographic even if one has done something rather clever with the text, such as these inspiring logos below that I found on an excellent website that features the very best logo designs called Logo Faves.

So good a website in fact that I found myself deciding I was a ‘dreadful logo designer’ after a short browse.

A typographic logo is well suited to a organisation that has a very descriptive company name, good examples of descriptive names include Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and The Royal Mail.

Those who want the simplicity of a typographic logo design, but do not have a descriptive company name, would perhaps be well advised to add a tagline to the logo that explains what services and/or goods may be on offer.

The only businesses that don’t need to bother with a tagline in the absence of a descriptive company name, are perhaps those with huge marketing budgets for brand awareness campaigns. Although you have to question the sanity of sending millions tellling people what you do instead of simply opting to add a tagline to your logo and reduce your marketing spend?

A very useful blog with regards to company names is The Name Inspector.

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Graphical Logo Design
A graphical logo design is a company logo that in addition to the company name has a notable graphical image used to represent the company identity.

From Logo Faves again, some fabulous examples of this include:

A graphical logo is by far the most popular choice of logo design, and suitable for most business types. It gives the business the opportunity to create a memorable graphic to associate with the company name, which also represents the ethos and offering of the company in a visual way.

For small business owners it’s typical that the graphical part of the logo design is used to hammer home what their offering is and there is a tendancy to lean towards being more literal with the imagery rather than abstract.

As mentioned previously, without a large advertising budget, it can be hindrance to have to keep explaining what you do because your logo graphic doesn’t explain it and neither does your company name. It’s wise to at least hint at the offering via your graphical icon.

Graphical icons that are used alongside the company name need to cover a few basic practicalities if they are going to be of long term benefit to the firm using them.

For instance, ideally the graphic should work in black and white as well as in colour. If it doesn’t work in pure black and white, it should at the very least work well still in grayscale. It’s ideal if a logo can work well in black and white because situations may arise over the company lifespan where it becomes beneficial to use a black only logo - for instance to reduce printing costs, or in situations where the logo is ‘engraved’ rather than printed.

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Illustrative Logo Design
This type of logo design, whilst popular is less commonly chosen compared a typographical or graphical logo design.

There are many reasons for this including; business type (certain types of industries tend to gravitate to illustrative logo designs), personal taste of the business owner, the intended practical application of the logo and more.

With regards to it’s application; a heavily illustrative logo design may not the most practical choice if the company knows it’s going to be printed very small on a regular basis for instance.

Many small business owners and large brands alike favour an illustrative logo design to represent their brand message, and some of the reasons for selecting an illustrative logo design can include;

- The target market; it’s common for a business that has children/families as it’s target market to choose an illustrative logo design to present a more friendly and fun face of the business. This can often take the form of a character/mascot within the design.

- Company image/brand; those firms that seek to present themselves as traditional and very established, perhaps with a company history behind them, may decide to use an illustrative emblem or crest to give the impression that they’ve been around a lot longer than they perhaps have been.

A word of caution
Don’t try to use a stock image as an illustrative logo design for your company by slapping your company next to it. Stock images/illustrations are governed by copyright just like any other image, and if you check the stock licence carefully before you buy you will see that in 99.99% of cases the stipulation is that stock illustrations/graphics cannot be used as part of a company brand.

Thus if you want an illustrative logo design for your company, you’ll need to hire a logo designer with illustrative skills to provide an original design for you company, and to receive copyright ownership of that design from them as part of the offering.

Here are some examples of some of the most famous illustrative logo designs of our time;

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Thoughts on Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.