The key benefit for your brand to have a responsive logo is that you have the potential to maximise legibility for specific size and type. The flexibility of having a responsive logo means you won’t have to worry about minimising the logo when relevant to do so.
A standard logo often becomes illegible and unusable for purpose when significantly scaled-down. All popular brands have variants of their logo to suit specific needs and to maintain clarity of the brand despite leaving out elements of the main logo. It’s recommended that you keep 4 variants of your logo tailored appropriately to size.
Consider how small the smallest variant will look. Keeping key elements in mind, your logo will still convey your brand and you won’t have to damage the overall recognisability and look by simplifying.
Logo Type vs Logo Mark
Two types of logos are ‘Type’ and ‘Mark’. We see both on an everyday basis within standard branding.
‘Type’ is represented by a logo that contains the text. The text within the logo will say the name of the brand – making it a relevant beginner logo as it makes the audience correlate the logo and brand name.
‘Mark’ is an element taken from the original logo that is simplified and is used when relevant (i.e t-shirt or media icon)
How to select the element
Maintaining consistency when simplifying doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep the essential parts of the logo that can be easily recognised. Look at keeping the exact colour palette within the responsive set and any text to keep the same typography. This will help to not confuse your target audience or make people think it’s two separate brands.
Circumstance Appropriacy
Maximise legibility and create multiple variants that can be used with different circumstances. Consider everything the logo might be used for. Historically, a logo design would be simplified for stamps, promotional pens and newspapers. Today we see the diversity of responsive logos when we see the differentiation between logos on shirts, email, billboards and many other platforms.
Creating a responsive design really helps to move your brand forward. Next time you commission a designer or a client comes asking for a logo design – it’s worth speaking to them about responsive design.
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