About ten years ago, I was at my desk working on a logo design for one of my first official clients. As the days went by and I was in the full process, I kept asking myself questions. Lots of questions. Sketching and playing in Adobe Illustrator in order to come up with meaningful and aesthetic ideas for this project made me understand more about his business, his customers, and how design connects these two. Does the logo have to represent the business? Does the logo have to be understood by the customers? Does it have to tell a story? What if in the future the owner sees himself in a position to change the way business is done, does the logo have to be changed too? What does a logo mean? Is it a reflection of what it represents or is it a relatable form with its public? If the logo I did promised quality products, will the business deliver? Questions and questions piled up.
After all this time, besides the questions back then, I piled up even more. How will the logo stand the test of time? How does color psychology help? Who is the logo for? Is it for the audience or is it for the business owner? Can a logo influence a company’s success?
So I began to understand that I can’t control the outcome and what’s beyond my skills and understanding. What I needed to do best was to learn and communicate clearly. Striving to create clear messages and easy-to-understand design is essential in building a distinctive identification. I believe now, unlike at any other time in history, the world is filled to the brim with every possible pictogram, monogram, emblem, letterform, geometric shape, abstract mark, image, and all forms of visual design that stand for something. I don’t think you can really come up with one hundred percent original ideas, especially when you go for simplicity. It’s like all the good ones have already been done, and now you are left with scraps. But that doesn’t stop us from discovering new ways of doing things, new iterations of the same old, and even recreating them to bring them justice.
How did the necessity for a logo come about?
The desire to claim ownership is perfectly natural, you sign papers, you carve initials on a bench in the park or on a tree, and you put your name on your creations. Reason? Immortality, pride, validation, or other peculiar and particular logic. Pottery artists used monogram steps to mark their work as a sign of craftsmanship and quality, cattle owners branded their stock to be easy to identify. King had monogram seals, and kingdoms had entire systems including a hymn, a flag that had colors with strong symbolism, crests, emblems for their soldiers, and other symbols. States and communities all united under different heraldry or blazon, you had different social classes with powerful families and individuals who had their own mark. It’s not any different now, except that capitalism brought freedom to the market and the need to distinguish and identify services and products is greater than at any time in our history.
Logo beyond decoration and ownership
Strange as it sounds, the logo is a form of decoration and a successful business decorates everything with their logo. Stationery designs, documents, clothing, accessories, buildings, cars, you name it. What makes the logo more than a decoration is the strategy, values, and meaning that we must add to the design system. Long gone are the days when owners used to make their own logo designs. Now, a person specialized in this specific domain can understand what are the implications, the positioning, and the way a logo communicates.
Now that things are clear, I decided to present a collection of logo designs only, even though they might seem irrelevant in some cases but I won’t go into the presentation of full visual identities, strategies, or the entire branding process on a large collection. I will leave those for case studies. In this one, is just logo design. Simple, beautiful, and meaningful as they seem to be.
I did logo designs for a plethora of industries ranging from tech to non-profit. I’ve done logo designs for artists, logo design for lawyers, monograms for family businesses, pictorial marks for entertainment businesses, logos for the music industry, logos for real estate, logos for marketing agencies, and lots of logo designs for fitness, automotive, construction, logo for video games, and logo for video games companies, beauty, interior design, competitions, festivals, products, food industry, apparel and clothing, space and satellites, financial, accommodation, restaurants, cosmetics, movie production, studios of all sorts, outdoors. I think I have done logos for at least one form of business from each of the main domains. It’s incredible how many things people do. So, I selected a few, beautiful ones which I deemed worthy of showcasing. I published a project on Behance but I also posted the work on my Instagram, Twitter, and other social accounts. Don’t forget to follow, appreciate, like, share, and subscribe. You are forgetting all the time, don’t you?
Wordmarks & Logotypes
Wordmarks are a pure pleasure to create. In fact, the more I work as a graphic designer, the more I believe that typography is the epicenter of this industry. You have typefaces, fonts, hand-lettering, calligraphy, kerning, leading, alignment, and all the aspects of writing properly in order to deliver a message. Typography for the win. I’ve written a blog post on why I love creating wordmarks from scratch using techniques such as calligraphy and hand lettering. It is a wonderful world of serifs, sans serifs, blackletter, script, monospace, handwritten, and my personal favorite of all time, slab-serif. Boy oh boy, slab serif is just so delightful to draw and create while aiming for a perfect balance between curves and straight lines.
Below, you can see variations of lettering and calligraphy where I opt for a serif style of fonts in the Attitudent logo, HeyJoyRide, or Jones, use a monospace typeface on AudioSchool, and other variations for the rest of them.
Monograms & Lettermarks Logo
Monograms can be extremely easy to do or extremely hard. There is no in between. You either are lucky to get a brief that requires a single-letter logo design or a creative combination of multiple letters, numbers, and glyphs. Some letters combine very well, while others are challenging to create a beautiful aesthetic monogram without sacrificing legibility. However, that is what I do, and that is what all designers are doing: finding a beautiful solution and then going through twelve rounds of feedback just to return to square one.
Single-letter monograms that are easy to do but hard to create something original include Nord One, Antaluca, Kleos, and even Cosmin Mirza, as you can see below. I am also satisfied with how BB Cakes, FitNet, and Fitness Business Romania turned out.
Pictorial Logo
If you didn’t see my previous post about pictorial logo design, here is a link. Pictorial logo design, iconic logo design, or even symbolic logo design is also correct because the pictogram, icon, or symbol is the main representation of the logo. Sure, they can be combined with wordmarks and emblems, but usually the image can be used by itself, separated from typography. I’d rate this type of logo design as hard to do on the creation scale. It's hard because finding a proper representation with the right symbolism without going into the abstract is difficult work.
Abstract Logo Marks
By far the hardest type of logo design. Why? Because your abstract logo designs have to have a properly defined meaning even if they don’t represent physical entities. At the same time, they are also the easiest to do. Just create some random shapes and hope that they will catch on, or that the company will have a good product, or that the marketing will be just right. If it is successful, you can harvest the praises and receive a magna cum laude for your genius. And you know that it is luck. It will sneak under your skin and make you feel like an impostor. But it's fine, really.
It's hard for me to say that my collection of abstract marks is that random. They are well thought out and have meaning even if they are represented in a vague, subjective way. For example, the Darart represents the process of wool carding. Barefoot represents the four elements of nature: light/sun/fire, air, water, and earth. Wise Insights is a 'w' represented vertically and also an 'i'. And Dahhuz (beard oil) is a beard and a mustache; if you add two eyes on top, you can see the face.
Emblems, Badges and Crests
There is something I really love about emblem and crest logo designs. I wish I could get more projects like these. Why? Because they combine all of the above. A pictogram or a monogram plus logotype plus decorative elements and in some cases even abstract icons. They also have a historical significance that goes back to coats of arms and family shields often used by nobility. I’m referring to the best of the best ones, which have layers and layers of symbolism and storytelling, superb craftsmanship, and lots of ornate elements. Definitely the most artistic type of logo design.
Emblems also induce a feeling of authority, prestige, and a sense of belonging to a community. I love them and appreciate the craftsmanship behind each one. One of the designers who is still creating some amazing badges and crests nowadays is Widdak. It’s just eye candy for me.
Which type of logo design is your favourite?
Wordmarks and Logotypes
Monograms & Lettermarks
Pictorial Logo
Abstract Logo Marks
One might say that these are too few logo designs to be done in ten years. I say nay and forget them, may. Add to each of the logos presented lots of other concepts, iterations, revisions, visual identity, presentation, tons of other graphic designs for that company, brand manuals, calls, arguments, frustration, stress, relief, satisfaction, and enlightenment.
So after a decade of work, it is expected to come up with some sort of conclusion. Maybe an epiphany, words of wisdom, or some shiiid to make our soul exalt with hope, joy, and beauty. Here are my two cents: First of all, thank you for checking my work, that brings me enough validation to make me feel right.
Secondly, I believe we can find meaning in work, no matter what we do. Working as a graphic designer granted me the opportunity to get in touch with so many people with so many different ideas of things that can be done. People who believe that they can change the world for the better, people who believe that they can put their mark on history, and some people who just want to make do with what they can. I’m grateful for being part of my customers' journey, and I hope my work serves them properly. For the future, I aim to deliver better and better work, learn to communicate more effectively, and do my part in this world, even if it’s something S M A L L like making the logo bigger.
Send me your ideas or start a conversation.
I write on this blog as often as I can and you can find details about my graphic design work and get in touch on my website.