Icon Design - Logos, Icons & Iconic Logotypes.

Icon logos generally feature highly simplified graphics (symbols) that reflect an aspect of the company and/or product portrayed. These graphics can be highly abstract in concept or feature a reasonably accurate depiction of an idea, concept or item. Truth to tell, it's the treatment of the image, as well as the subject matter, that defines an iconic logo. Icon logotypes are perhaps the most common (a slim margin over graphical) and is probably the type of design that comes to mind if you were asked to describe"what makes a logo". But despite their relative simplicity, these logos are often the most difficult to design - it's certainly not easy to take complex ideas or concepts and break them down into a few abstract shapes. Doing so requires the services of an experienced designer who is able to understand both the conceptual and technical limitations of developing such a design.

Let's take a look at the Nexus Funding Corporation logo (right) - a design created by The Logo Factory a few years back. This extremely simple icon represents two hands locked together - symbolizing co-operation and teamwork. Not an easy concept to illustrate with one simple shape. The Impact Basketball logo (below left) is more illustrative in approach, but remains well within the iconic category. There's also more to this logo than meets the eye - the star graphic represents the 'stars' or the Impact basketball logos, as well as an almost 'comic book' treatment of an actual basketball 'impact'. Because of the somewhat abstract ideas contained within these kinds of designs, iconic logos run the risk of being described as clip art logos by the viewer, who may not have the understanding of what's actually being illustrated. Accordingly, the development of these logos should be left in the hands of seasoned designers whose ability to create simplistic graphics has become more developed over time.

When developing an iconic logo, the logo design process involves creating a graphic that depicts some aspect of the company, broken down into a very simple series of shapes and objects. Unlike illustrative logos, we try to avoid adding blends, gradients and other nifty special FX lest the design become cluttered. More often than not, iconic logos feature solid geometric shapes, arranged in a way that very quickly describes the company portrayed (iconic logos are probably the logotype that you're most familiar with - think Apple, Nike, Adidas, etc) - and are probably the most effective in quickly building brand recognition. Utilizing an icon design has certain technical advantages over their illustratiions counterpart, perhaps the most important one being this; these logos are most adaptable when your design is to be featured at a small size, or in low-resolution reproduction such as newspapers, faxes, etc. Iconic logos are generally developed with a text portion - though secondary to the overall design - which can be dropped at a later date, once your logo has been well exposed through marketing and advertising efforts. Due to their relative simplicity, iconic designs are the best choice for certain applications - logo embroidery for one example, flash animation for another - and these are the kinds of logos that have the fastest retention factor for your viewing audience. There are no pricing restrictions with iconic logos which are available through our Entry, Professional and Gold design packages. Speaking of icon design, you can download free web icons in our Morgue Files.

Icon design logo examples - from our galleries.