The 5 Sins of Typographic Logo Designs

Has your logo failed to make an impact with the customers? Is your typographic logo too ordinary and confusing?

Where did you go wrong?

Choosing the right type of typographic logo design is very important for your brand. Using the wrong typography fails to makes the logo memorable or unique. Your logo needs to stand out of the crowd instead of blending into it.

Let’s see if you’ve made some of these common typography logo design sins:

1. Using the wrong font style:

There are a lot of font styles available for you, but the different between a professional logo design and an amateur is that the pro knows what font looks appropriate for the brand. It is very important to use the right font style for your logo design. The font style should be unique yet legible. The Google logo is often criticized for being too colorful and amateur and the font style just being all wrong. The only reason why it gets away with it is because of its simplicity, which complements the search engine itself.

Ever wondered why they change their logo according to occasions? It’s because their original logo isn’t good enough.

2. Making the color tones of text and background similar:

Which one of the two is more legible? You’re right, it’s the second one. So what went wrong in the first image?

Always remember, the first rule of typographic logo inspiration is that your logo should be legible. You may be using the right font style but if the colors that you use are not appropriate; then let me warn you, your logo will suffer.

3. Bigger isn’t always better:

Big logos just tend to look crowded and overwhelming. They fail to be memorable or unique. Big font logos may look good in a poster but never in other mediums. For example, look at the Dojo logo below. If the same logo was done in smaller font size with italic, the logo would have looked much more appealing.

4. Only use two different font styles max, too many fonts can become an overkill:

Using too many fonts together takes away the logo’s uniqueness and just starts looking confused. Is that the impression of your brand you want to set? That it’s confused? You can use a maximum of two different font styles in a logo, but not more than that. And even when you are using two different fonts together, make sure that they have similar shapes.

5. Abstract creates illegibility:

I can bet you can’t tell what this logo says, right?

Beautiful logos are meant to be seen, read and admired. If the logo isn’t even legible, the design falls flat. Now take a look at the below logo. It says Play. This may be a very creative way to write play, but it pretty much defies the whole purpose if your viewer can’t even read it. Making the logo designs too abstract can also be dangerous.

Hence, to make a logo exclusive and distinct, make sure that you use the right fonts, text colors and background. And most of all; make sure that your logo is readable. You can get away with a lot of branding mistakes, but creating the wrong logo design is a sin for which you’ll have to suffer for years to come.