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Where would coca-cola be without the cursive print design, MacDonald’s without the golden arches or UPS without the brown shield emblem? These logos are strong brand identities for businesses dealing with different lines of products and services, and yet, each one of them is built in a completely different logo design style.
There are five basic logo design styles, each with its set of different strengths and weaknesses, and it is necessary for the designer and the client to be aware of these styles so that they can make the right choices when designing logos for their businesses. Below is a brief definition of each of the types as well as a few tips on how to make the right choice depending on the nature of your business-:
Woodmark logo design style
Woodmark logo style is also known as text logos. On a study organized on the top 100 brands in the world, it was discovered that 35% of them consisted purely of text, with most of them styled uniquely using different fonts. These logos are known as woodmark logos and can also be referred to as logotypes.
Woodwork logo design style works wonders when the name of the company is quite distinctive. For instance, the Google logo is an example of a woodmark logo design style featuring a simple, minimalist design. But it has worked well for the branding of the tech giant because the name also is simple, short and memorable. Other examples of big brands which have used this logo design style effectively include Yahoo and Pinterest amongst other brands that use relatively simple texts as the name and the logo.
This kind of logo style design is accordingly recommended for small companies or small businesses that are just starting to get their feet off the ground. This is because at this stage, getting the word out about your business is very important and you need to have a logo that will clearly communicate the name of the company.
Emblem logo design style
With this logo design style, text is used inside a symbol in creating the logo so that the two are inseparable. In most of such designs, they look like official badges or seals, and they are predominantly used by political and government organization. However, they have also been used for branding by some well-known corporate entities like Ford, Starbucks, Harley Davidson amongst others. These logos are flexible and also look more compact thus giving strong graphical representation of the image of the company as well as the name.
Brandmark logo design style
Symbols have been used by some top brands to express an idea more effectively than words or text. This is the essence of brandmark logo design style. This logo design style uses just a symbol or an icon to give the target audience a clear image of the company’s identity without using a single word. This is has been the secret behind the success of some global companies whose products are easily recognized by consumers in multiple countries, irrespective of the language.
Brandmark logo design style is also appropriate in instances where the company’s name is very long and does not provide appropriate letters for creating simple and clear initials. Some of the companies which use brandmark logos include Windows, Target, Toyota and Twitter amongst others.
Combination Mark logo design style
56% of the logos of the top brands in the world use a combination of mark and symbol in their logos. Combination Mark logo design style gives a taste of both worlds hence their popularity in most of the iconic logos in the world. They give out the name of the company while at the same time associating it with the image of the brand. Examples of such logos include Pizza Hut, XBOX 360, and Adidas.
Lettermark Logo design style (use of initials)
Simplicity is always critical when it comes to branding in general and creation of logos in specific. Lettermark Logo design style is here to help designers and clients achieve this with their logos. This logo design style is similar to woodmark in the sense that it also uses text, but it highlights the initials of the company and not the entire name.
This is the preferred logo style if your organization’s name is difficult to pronounce or if it is comprised of a very long name. For example, “IBM” looks simple and catchier compared to the full name which reads “International Business Machine”. If you anticipate that you will have a minimal space for branding, lettermark logo style would be a convenient way to maximize on size while still providing a good indication of the name of your company.
Additionally, lettermark logo style has a unique way of assigning equal visual weight to all of the letters used in the initials of the company’s name. This, in turn, makes the logo to be easily remembered by customers, thus further enhancing the effectiveness of the logo. Examples of logos designed in this style include EA Sports, CNN and IBM amongst others.
