
The Makings of a Great Logo - lominming
https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/the-makings-of-a-great-logo
======
ArekDymalski
I've got a feeling that a big part of our sentiment towards the logo comes
_after_ the company succeeds. That's when stories, associations and emotions
reinforce our perception of the brand as a whole.

Just imagine Apple producing crappy, cheap devices. Would we still consider
their logo awesome? I doubt it.

~~~
gone35
Absolutely. Logo branding is a near perfect locus for business cargo-culting:
" _clearly_ great companies that are iconic and recognizable have great logos,
so we need a great logo to become iconic and recognizable too!". The problem
--as with most intractable "design wisdom" nowadays-- is that there is very
little empirical evidence to support either way --- _cf_ the 1875 Bass Brewery
logo[1], (arguably) precisely the kind of meaningless "business name slapped
on a generic shape" being argued against in the article.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Brewery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Brewery)

------
devindotcom
Step 1: Hire Saul Bass

[http://annyas.com/saul-bass-logo-design-then-now/](http://annyas.com/saul-
bass-logo-design-then-now/)

~~~
asperous
What I think is interesting is in a lot of cases the older logos have the more
'flat' style which now is back in fashion and so looks futuristic/better.

------
shasta
I had noticed neither that the arrow in Amazon's logo points from A to Z nor
that the arrow resembles a smile. My guess is that the only competitive
advantage resulting from such design flourishes is the free press you get from
designers discussing your logo.

~~~
cschmidt
Have you ever noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo? I'm always surprised how
few people have "seen" it.

Go look now:
[https://www.google.com/#q=fedex+logo](https://www.google.com/#q=fedex+logo)
if you don't know what I'm talking about

~~~
Swizec
No matter how many times people show me that arrow, I just _cannot_ see it.
Maybe I'm a visual idiot.

~~~
subdane
Helps?
[http://toneiusmaximus.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/090113-fed...](http://toneiusmaximus.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/090113-fedex-
express-arrow4.png)

~~~
ekianjo
Helps, but this arrow is really invisible, because you see the letters first,
not the arrow - your brain is not wired to decode letters this way. The Amazon
logo is more clever in that sense.

------
radley
_The logos of Path and Pinterest are very similar._

Pinterest was actually designed by Mike Deal and fontographer Juan Carlos
Pagan. The letter P looks like a needle & thread (i.e. a pin).

[http://blog.pinterest.com/post/31465690453/new-logo-
design-n...](http://blog.pinterest.com/post/31465690453/new-logo-design-notes-
from-michael-carlos)

Path... is a font.

[http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/32786/path-logo-
font](http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/32786/path-logo-font)

~~~
thathonkey
Yeah but you don't pin things to bulletin boards using needle and thread so
while clever, it doesn't really match their concept like you suggest.

~~~
frogpelt
Pinterest is about the ideas and projects that are being pinned more than just
about the act of pinning.

A needle and thread is a nice way to represent those ideas that are being
shared.

------
ohwp
The articles doesn't give examples of why you need to test your logo in black
and as small size. I think some logo designers only focus on digital so here
some non digital examples:

Black logo examples:

    
    
      Logo on a Fax
      Logo on a photo copy
      Logo on a black-only laser printer
    

Small logo examples:

    
    
      Logo on a pen
      Logo on a USB drive

------
sithu
"All these logos are sized to fit in 16 x 16 pixels." \- I was surprised how
crisp these look for 16 pixels, then noticed the file was actually 32 x 32 and
shows up as such on a retina display. It's a fair point that only the first
four logos are recognizable when 16 pixels though.

~~~
rezistik
Honestly, that seems very fair. Because of the way retina screens upsize
images you actually get a clearer view of how it looks at 16 pixels in a
standard screen by being served the 32px when using a retina one.

~~~
sesqu
Can you explain what you mean with that? Surely an upscaled 16px image is more
comparable to a crisp 16px image than a crisp 32px image is to a crisp 16px
image, unless you want to argue that the 16px images are hand-crafted for
crispness over form.

------
kawsper
I really like Dockers logo, its cute and it works perfectly for a system that
let you manage, and "ship containers".

There is blog-post here about how they got their logo:
[http://blog.docker.io/2013/06/announcing-new-docker-
style/](http://blog.docker.io/2013/06/announcing-new-docker-style/)

~~~
johnrob
One downside is that it reminds me of the "fail whale".

------
nayanga

        it should be hand drawable 
        Keeping it Simple
        Do not use multi-color (meaning no color transitions and shading, but can have more colors )
        Should look good in B&W
        Pattern should be easily recognizable

~~~
nayanga
[http://nayan-ambali.blogspot.in/](http://nayan-ambali.blogspot.in/)

------
NAFV_P
The DHL logo [0], it's odd but why do leaning or italic bold letters give a
sensation of movement? Oh, and a logo from a dnb label [1].

[0] [http://www.dhl.co.uk/en.html](http://www.dhl.co.uk/en.html) [1]
[http://www.metalheadz.co.uk](http://www.metalheadz.co.uk)

------
GhotiFish
That javascript one is fantastic.

edit: Apparently I'm Blasé.

------
rhengles
>> Casual script fonts like Comic Sans are probably best left for fun and
animated companies such as toy companies.

Except Comic Sans _itself_, which isn't appropriate for anything.

~~~
aurumpotest
Actually, my mum uses it all the time. She's a primary school teacher, and it
works great for children's worksheets, seeing as the 'a' is formed the way we
learn to write it at school. Yes there's other fonts with 'a's like that, but
not ones that are available on all computers by default.

------
spb
This list should be in the reverse order.

~~~
tripzilch
I especially expected the part about the silhouette being recognizable to be
at the top.

------
anotherevan
Dammit. I misread this as "The Makings of Great Lego"

Yet another disappointment. Sigh.

------
hkmurakami
I'm ashamed that I read WWF as the wresting version rather than the wildlife
version :(

~~~
CmonDev
Actually that is Windows Workflow Foundation.

~~~
chiph
The WWF (the wildlife people) have some amazing lawyers. Not only did they
defeat _Microsoft_ , but they also defeated Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple
H [1].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Attitude_Era](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Attitude_Era)

------
gene_rey
Maybe we should ask Will.I.Am regarding this matter.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFA7DUM008](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFA7DUM008)

------
Mithaldu
I wonder what possessed them to choose a domain name that most closely evokes
a medical condition.

------
MIT_Hacker
Can we talk about the line height and weight on the font of their blog? Hate
to be a classic HN commenter, but it makes it almost impossible to read on
mobile. Very little of my screen is actual black pixels, mostly just white
space between lines and characters...

</rant>

~~~
anigbrowl
Design commentary in comments seems to be taboo here lately.

~~~
npizzolato
I would call it more "design complaining" and it honestly gets tiring because
in every single thread there's someone complaining about how a header or
slightly too thin font or or less-than-perfect margins or some other minor
nitpick makes the site "impossible to read".

~~~
vacri
This isn't a comment about layout, it's a comment saying that the _content_
can't be read because it's following that current trend of gray-on-white (that
only Apple monitors seem to be able to present as intended). Sure, nitpicks
about layout are annoying, but it's perfectly reasonable for someone to
complain that they can't access the content.

~~~
npizzolato
I read this article on an android phone in chrome, and while the text is a bit
gray, it was still very easy to read. Unless your settings are way off, I
can't imagine the colors are impossible to read outside of absurd hyperbole.

~~~
vacri
Something doesn't have to be "impossible to read" to make it inaccessible.
Something written in Russian is inaccessible to me, as I don't read Russian.
But it's not "impossible to read" \- I can learn Russian; I can ask a friend;
or most easily, I can use a translation tool to convert it to English. None of
these are absurd hyperbole, but the content would be inaccessible without
putting effort into it. When it comes to design, you generally want to avoid
barriers to the user experience - and given that this is an article on a
design topic concerning approachability and accessibility, my opinion is that
it's fair game. Also, not everyone has 'normal' vision, which is another point
to remember - text that is 'a little off' can be much worse for someone who is
already near the boundaries.

In any case, it looks like the author has gone back and darkened the text (or
am I imagining things?)

------
leoCodePoet
The example of Pinterest and Path is for what? their logo is bad? I noticed
that a lot of corp are using a single letter as their logo, such as Mashable,
even hacker news. Recognizable is important, but hard. I upvote Pinterest logo
over Path, and I like Twitter birds!

