The Five Types of Logos

Here are the top five types of logos and how to use them.

Logos are often the first visual introduction people have of your business, and when designed and chosen well, create instant brand recognition.

Wordmark

Much as it sounds, this type of logo is simply made up of the name of your business. That said, there are hundreds or thousands of font types, custom typefaces and colour combinations that form part of the design and the impression your logo can make.

Examples? Think Google, Coca Cola and Canon.

And what are the tricks to making an effective Wordmark logo? Make sure your typeface doesn’t render your wording indecipherable and think about what different letterforms evoke – for example, Comic Sans, once super popular, will likely render your logo old fashioned and low budget looking. Likewise, exploring the psychology of colour could help better make your message (think greens and blue for calm, navy’s and grey for austerity, hot pinks for modern creativity.)

Pictorial Mark

Equally obvious from its name, this type of logo uses a graphic device to symbolise a company name or brand – fantastic for companies with long names or where a picture better sells the ethos or ‘brand’ of a business. For example, the Apple and the Twitter logos which are sleek, stylish and modern, befitting tech companies. The connection is also clear – Apple being an apple, Twitter using a bird, which ‘tweets’ – just as their users do!

Abstract Mark

Similar to the pictorial mark logo, the Abstract uses an image to identify it’s brand, however, it is a less literal rendition – where Apple uses a stylised but still clearly recognisable apple image, Pepsi uses a circle with the blue, red and white sectors. It is so recognisable that when they played around with the lines separating the colours, it was still instantly recognisable as Pepsi’s logo and both can be used interchangeably.

Other key examples? BP’s green, gold and white stylised sunflower and Xbox 360’s 3D globe with X mark.

Emblem

Utilising both Letter and Pictorial form elements, the emblem logo integrates a company name and lettering superimposed onto a pictorial shape – Harley Davidson being an excellent example of this type of logo. Often these brands utilise a suite of slightly different logo layouts and styles that can be interchanged depending on context and sizing e.g a tagline might be introduced to the design when used in a large format or the business name might be reduced to an acronym when printed at a very small size.

Letterform

Perhaps the best-recognised example of using single letters to create a logo is the ‘golden arches’ image symbolising McDonalds. As you can imagine, there’s a little more to it than simply picking which and how many letters to include in the logo – colour, font, and styling to the letter (almost creating a picture of the letter a possibility – for example, including a tiny electric plug at the end of a cursive ‘e’ for an electric brand logo or etching a face into the inside of a broad fonted ‘c’.)

This can also be a great choice for businesses with long names – think NASA, IBM or BHP. 

When it comes to creating a logo for your business, there’s a delicate balance between a wide range of factors – different colours, typefaces, word lengths, sizes and backgrounds all play into the message a customer reads when they view it. This is where a marketing and design expert can ensure you get this first impression just right. Chat to us today about how we can work with you to create a branded logo worth recognising.