Different Types of Logos

Submitted on Sun, Jun 7th, 2009 10:20 am

A logo is a symbol or an identification mark that conveys name, identity, type or ownership of your business or name. The main aim of a logo is to educe recognition. The logo works as a medium to communicate your desired views and to get a positive response. A well-thought and well designed logo can build up your brand image and corporate identity, giving you a psychological benefit over your competition. Your logo is the core of your business and identity. It defines and symbolizes the spirit of your company.

As you must have noticed and agree that there are an infinite possibilities with any logo designing or corporate identity design project. If we accumulate all of them we will reach to four ways for treating most logo designs. These four distinct categories of logos are Text/Word mark, Iconic/Symbolic, Graphical and Illustrative. These four types are fairly basic but accurate categorizations. This can become a guideline to new logos designers also.

Like everything else each logo type has its own merits, advantages and/or limitations and disadvantages. It could be analyzed that a logo type is more suitable for certain market segments or business needs than others. If you are familiar with the different types of logos, their advantages and weaknesses, you can make an educated decision on which logo type is more suited to your requirements.

Let's take a closer look at the various logo types:

Text/Word mark/Logotype Logos Text logos popularly called as Word Mark or Logotype are the simplest of the other logo types. They are mostly favored by the Fortune 500 corporations. Ironically, their simplicity makes it enormously difficult to design as the logo designer is very limited in the possible options and the tricks of the trade. So the font based logo design requires an experienced logo designer. The most important benefit of getting a Word Mark logo is that it will automatically promote your company name comprehensively without being chaotic with heavy clip arts, illustrations, visuals and graphics.

Iconic/Symbolic Logos Iconic or symbolic logos normally feature very simple graphics and/or symbols that portrays an aspect or image of your company or product. The key benefit here is that they can be used solo with graphics only or with text also. So, this type of logo is conceivably the most common ones which people choose to go with. But they are generally the most difficult ones to create and need the services of an experienced logo designer.

Graphical/Combination Logos Graphical or combination logos as are called popularly, lie somewhere between an iconic/symbolic and illustrative logo types. The logos which fall into this category are visually very appealing. They are made with so much detail that they can be easily recognized, and technically easier to use into all media usages.

Illustrative Logos Illustrative logos are the ones which are more detailed and a little complex than graphical/combination logo types. They are a pictorial or illustrative representation of some feature of your company or product. This type of logo can depict the name, the business idea or your company's mascot.