Textual, Iconic or Illustrative?

A logo design needs to be eye-catching and memorable at the same time so that it can stand out from the masses and give a long-lasting impression to its target audience. Going for shock value or setting sights on a subtler impact depends on how you want your ideal logo design to look like in the first place. Either way, it all boils down to how you want the public to remember your business by. A creative and fun illustration? Or something more serious, like a textual interpretation of the name of your business?

Basically, there are three general categories for logo designs which are:  TEXTUAL, ICONIC & ILLUSTRATIVE. 

TEXTUAL

It’s relatively much simpler in terms of design as it fundamentally consists only of words but a lot of hard work goes behind the scenes into making a distinctive and unique font for the textual logo. If the textual logo is designed impeccably well, it stands out and serves as both a display of the company’s name and easily a design to associate the company with. Below are some prime examples of famous text-based logo designs:

ICONIC

This is a more interesting approach in designing an identity and brand for a business as it is much more appealing to the general public. The design usually depicts the company’s image be it an outline of a wild animal or a simple everyday object. Though it is uncomplicated and more minimal compared to an illustrative logo design, it is still the most popular option today for most businesses be it multinational corporations or small enterprises. Here are some examples of well-known iconic logos:

ILLUSTRATIVE

An illustrative logo design is a complete eye-catcher with very detailed designing and vivid colors. Albeit its complexity, many still regard this as a very effective marketing tool in branding a business. Its popularity has been slightly on the decline these past few years as we see more companies and businesses steering away from having an illustrious logo design but opt to have something more minimalist. Here are some examples of illustrative logo designs:

Those three categories mentioned above are only the general groupings. Nowadays, there are many corporations who intend to incorporate a few types of designs into their logo. Thus, many of those are classified as in-between categories. Before choosing the direction you want to take, think about your target audience in addition to how the logo will be able to associate itself and be in-line with your intended business.