Logo Design Characteristics

Log design is a complex creative process where professionalism and creativity are intertwined together to bring out the most satisfying result. Now, let’s keep aside these heavy words and try to find out the true characteristics of a great logo in simple English. A great logo, as the definition goes, should bear the brand value of an organization and that people can relate to. So, as thing stands, a good logo should have the following characteristics:

Following are some of the important characteristics of a good logo:

Shape
Presence
Weight
Contrast

Lets go through each of these characteristics of a great logo to have a clear understanding.

Defining Shape: - Do you feel hungry when you pass the nearby MacDonald shop? Yes you feel but if you think a bit carefully, you will be able to understand that it is its iconic logo (grinning at you all the time) that increases your appetite. So, a great logo design needs to have great shape otherwise how it will be able to carve out a niche for itself. Do not cram things around the shape as it will act as a major distraction and reduce its importance.

Lets check some popular logo to have a better understanding:

Examples of good shape

You may have a love hate relationship with Steve Jobs, but you can hardly ignore the iconic logo of his company. The best thing about Apple’s logo is that the designer has kept his faith on the shape only and thus, the shape does not have to share the attention with anyone else.

Nike logo stands tall in the crowd with its simple text and symbol. It is the simplicity of the logo that helps it cut ice with its targeted audience. Moreover, such recognizable its shape that the company has tried different color combination without doing any harm to its brand image.

Example of poor shape

The logo looks awful with images and symbols overlapping each other, creating a visual chaos. At the first look, viewers are unable to decide where to focus. The shape is hard to remember and there is no such integrity as such. Drop shadow adds to the visual mess and the figure is far from being impressive.

Presence

A prominent presence makes all the difference. It is judged by some metrics such as boldness, uniqueness and above all prominence. A great logo should make the best use of space allotted for it and its presence should make an indelible impact on the viewers.

Example of good presence

These two logos occupy almost all the allotted space and the City Hall logo goes even further and it almost goes beyond the space assigned.

Example of poor presence

The word covers a small section of the entire logo and the use two bright colors cut down on its impact even further. 87% of the total area remains vacant but the text fails to cash in on that gap. The use of bold text lost somewhere and it is too unclear to figure out something from it. The only visible strength of the logo is its bold use of color combination but that too fail to impress the readers.

Weight

A logo whose existence depends solely on its fine features is the worst that you can have. People tend to forget those logos whose characteristics are tough to recollect or narrate. 3D effects, use of fancy text, complex patterns etc may seem tempting but the crux of the matter is that they are hard to replicate. They features are detrimental to your logo’s weight. The greater the effects, the lesser the weight.

Example of good weight

IBM looks prominent with bold texts. Though the horizontal lines are something of a distraction, the logo still looks prominent.

Use of solid color and strong shape make Dell’s logo easily recognizable.

Example of poor weight

This logo looks dull and none of the elements used in this logo appears prominent and it sometime runs the risk of being overlooked by casual visitors. Embedded text is a huge downer and it reduces readability and one more thing, what does a painter’s palette has to do with a professional website design company.

Contrast

The difference between a good logo and great logo design is that good impresses but great logo engages. Great logo should be able to make the viewers feel greatly enlarged and they should be able to relate themselves with the logo and if you can manage to do it, the half of the battle will be won. Maintaining right contrast can help a logo designer immensely in this regard.

Examples of good contrast

A brilliant use of inverse and white-on-white contrast helps RockShox logo grabs the attention of the users. Use of strong colors make the MacDonald logo stand out of the crowd.

Examples of poor contrast

The text almost subdues the shape. It appears blurred and it is too light to figure out anything from it. The text ‘Venture Capital’ does not look impressive either. The only prominent thing that left in the logo is the word "Mobius” but it does not have any real significance.

The 3d effect is far from being impressive and the text goes missing thanks to poor contrast ratio. The brightness of the 3D effect almost overshadows the text.