To be or...

To have a graphic or not, that is the question!! (Pamplet, Prince of Advertising Act III scene I)

We human beings have this tendency to simplify things. I mean, at least we try simplifying things with the hope that the life would be simpler that way. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to club things/people/phenomenon into various categories. All such members of a category share some similar qualities and features which set them apart from the others.

So, this post is gonna be about the various categories in which we may club logos. And the selection of features based on which we’ll categorize the logos will be very simple and commonplace.

So here goes the list:

The ones with text only-

They are known as WORDMARK logo. As the name suggests, it’s only the name of the company written mostly in some style. The logic behind these kinds of logos is pretty straight forward…the name of the company need not be written separately. And the only disadvantage, as per my understanding, is that they cannot be used in the logo guessing game!! LOLZ

This category of logos works well when:

• You have a bizarre (or unique) business name like Yahoo! or Google which can very easily be remembered
• When it is hard to depict all that your company offers with the help of one symbol like TATA

If we wish, we may further divide the category in two sub categories. One where the full name of the company is written as a logo like:

or the other one where it is just the abbreviation or an alphabet of the name which is the logo. This particular sub category is known as Letter mark logo e.g.:

The ones with graphic only-

This category a.k.a. Graphic / Brand mark logo is again very popular amongst the leading brand and can usually be associated by very well known brands. Usually they are kept very simple and that is probably the reason that they are the ones which are most exploited by those who create duplicate products. Yup!! Believe me I’ve seen the swoosh logo on many of those products where Phil knight (Co founder Nike) couldn’t have even fantasized of.

This works better when:

• There is already very high awareness about the product/company and most probably have a global presence
• You’ve been using a combination logo (described next) for a long time and now think that there is no need to put in the name anymore because of the popularity
  
• The symbol/graphic is unique enough in itself to be confused with anyone else in the domain
  

The ones with both text and graphics-

Doesn’t the heading of these categories remind you of a very famous (or should I say the most famous) TV series ;)

This category thought of playing it safe. And probably by the number of members it has, we can safely declare it to be the biggest category. It simply offers the best of both the worlds.

And what I mean by saying that is:

• They are easy to get copyright protection on (as compared to the second category)
• The presence of both the logo graphic and the text gives one more options to describe about the company’s history/origin/specialty etc
• It suits a new company to go for such kind of logo as they lack the popularity and hence they would be more eager to ‘express themselves’