This article will tell you about eight types of logos and help you choose a type for your business or brand. When making a logo for your business or brand for the first time, you don’t want to rush into creating one yourself without getting to know certain things about it. However, sometimes a person has an incredible idea in his mind that he crafts down and makes into a beautiful logo. But for the other scenarios where a person is confused and doesn’t know about it, he makes a logo abruptly. Especially when he makes a logo himself due to unavailability for the budget.
Learning Objectives
So, if you’re thinking about making a logo yourself, this guide is for you. It is also helpful if you will hire a professional designer. We’ll talk about several logo types and their use, and this will help you to choose a type of logo for your business that suits it perfectly. If you want to hire an expert logo designer, you can contact any cheap logo design service.
1. Mascot Logo
Mascot logos contain a living thing’s image, be it an animal, bird, or a person (especially the pioneer/founder of the brand). If you want your brand or business to get recognized by you and people should never forget or sway away in their minds about the owner, the mascot logo is best for your business. However, you don’t have to use your real image. What we meant by this is you can use the cartoon version of your picture, such as KFC’s logo. Moreover, you can choose whatever cartoon type you want since KFC’s mascot image is somehow close to real, whereas Pringles’ logo is different.
Other than that, you can also choose your real image if you want. Quakers brand has the real image of the person in its logo.
Use of this Logo
You don’t want to use the Mascot logo for a business related to IT, office-based companies, or anything professional. Mascot logos suit restaurants, food brands, or anything that involves kids.
2. Combination Mark Logo
This type of logo contains symbols and text both. Combination mark logos represent a brand perfectly. For example, Burger King’s logo clearly says they sell burgers. Moreover, they tell it in their brand’s name as well, which they have written inside their logo. Although the name is written inside the logo in this type of logo, it’s not necessary. The name also tells the niche of the business. For example, by its name, Doritos doesn’t tell you they sell snacks unless you search for them. However, you may imagine through the triangle in their logo. Therefore, whatever your business name is, the logo at least needs to represent what your business/brand does. Other than that, the text and symbol together need to look great. If it does so, you can go for a combination mark logo.
Use of this Logo
Firstly, you can use this logo when your business can be represented through a symbol along with some text in it. Secondly, combination mark logos also don’t suit professional companies since they require sleeker, classic, and clean designs. Text and symbols combined together don’t look preferable to professional companies. Just like the mascot logo, combination mark logos also look good at restaurants, food brands, and toy shops.
3. Wordmark Logo
So, you’re not interested in using your picture in your logo nor any fancy symbols or text combined with them. We’ve got another great suggestion which is a wordmark logo. It’s a simple text-oriented logo. You may think how simple text logos look great or are even called logos. But let’s give you some examples of wordmark logos so that you understand them. Google, one of the biggest companies that everyone is aware of, uses the wordmark logo. No symbols, no designs, only text.
However, when you use only text logos, it doesn’t mean you just type it in a simple font and use it. You want to look great by involving colors and a special font to it. Even if it’s a black and white logo, you want to use some font in which the logo looks great.
Use of this Logo
Opposite to the first two types of logos we discussed, wordmark logos suit food brands, restaurants, or anything if the business name is unique and looks good when written solely. If it’s a generic name like coffee, then the wordmark logo is not the type you want to use. Create names like Coca-Cola and Google are ideal for wordmark logos. Therefore, if your business name is something creative and you want to represent the company through its name, choose the wordmark logo.
4. Letterform Logo
What do you do when you’re not satisfied with being minimalistic and not using symbols or fancy designs in logos? The solution is simple, choose the letterform logo. All you need to do is use the first letter of your brand creatively designed, and your logo is ready. Netflix uses a letterform logo. It’s a fancy N alphabet. McDonald’s also uses a letterform logo. It has a big yellowish-golden M letter. The good thing about letterform logos is that people recognize them through a single letter. But there’s a long road to getting their brand loved by the public beforehand.
Use of this Logo
You choose the letterform logo when you want to keep your brand representation as short as possible. You can get any alphabet and make its letterform logo from A to Z. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what the first letter of your brand or business is. As long as it can be represented creatively and attractively, you can use a letterform logo for your brand.
5. Lettermark/Monogram Logo
Lettermark logos are similar to wordmark logos, except that lettermark logos are abbreviations. For example, NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. On the other hand, wordmark logos such as Google are not an abbreviation. It’s only a creative word. There might be something hidden behind its name, but officially, it doesn’t have a full form. We also call lettermark logos monogram logos.
Use of this Logo
If your business’s name is long and looks good when abbreviated, use the lettermark logo. Lettermark logos suit the best IT industries and professional companies.
6. Emblem Logo
Emblem logos contain text wrapped inside a symbol. These logos are very professional-looking, along with some cultural touch in them. They are not simple like wordmark logos or lettermark logos; instead, they look heavy but professional. For example, the logo of Harvard University.
Use of this Logo
These kinds of logos are best when you want to make your logo look more sophisticated. They look good with big companies and academic institutes and don’t suit restaurants and food brands.
7. Pictorial Mark Logo
We discussed combination mark logos earlier. They represent the business through symbols and text that are related to the business. In pictorial logos, we don’t use text. You use the picture based on your brand’s name in pictorial logos. It’s almost similar to combination mark logos, except that pictorial mark logos consist of a single vector image. It doesn’t have several elements like Burger King’s logo. The logos of Twitter, Target, and Shell are examples of pictorial mark logos.
Use of this Logo
If you can wrap up your business into a symbol, a pictorial mark logo is for you. These are the second most creatively designed logos. But what’s the first one? Let’s talk about them below.
8. Abstract Logo
Abstract logos are geometric shapes that form a perfect logo. Unlike pictorial logos, abstract logos don’t contain pictures of something real–something that exists, such as birds and apples. We called them the number one creative designs because they are attractive symbols of things that don’t even exist. For example, the logo of Adidas and Pepsi.
Use of this Logo
When you can think of some shapes and symbols to wrap them creatively and form a logo, you can choose the abstract logo for your business. Abstract logo suit a wide range of businesses, such as food brands, clothing brands, IT companies, etc.
Also Read: Logos Have To Be Well-Designed To Make A Difference