We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. A logo can be a waste of space. That’s because most brands benefit from a quality wordmark – not a logo.
Wordmark vs. Logo
A logo is a symbol that can stand in place of your brand name. The Nike swoosh, the Starbucks mermaid and the Pepsi globe: these are logos. A wordmark is something different. It’s a brand signature composed of the letters in your brand name, and it can be heavily stylized. Coca-Cola has a wordmark, not a logo. So do Google, IBM and many other Fortune 500 companies.
Why Wordmarks Work Better Than Logos
The big reason is that your audience has one thing and one thing alone to focus on: your brand name. When a brand uses a logo in addition to a wordmark, it had better have mountains of marketing money to promote it, so the logo can come to embody the brand without the name present. For brands that don’t have multi-million-dollar budgets, wordmarks are the only way to fly.
Learn More About Wordmarks + Other Critical Brand Design Elements
Get our free new ebook How to Build a Visual Identity – out this April. It’s full of best practices for executives that want the most brand for their buck. Leading up to the release, we’ll be posting visual identity dos and don’ts every week. So stay tuned. Next week, we’ll talk a little bit about your social media buddy icon.
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