Text Logotypes - Logo Fonts.

Text based logos are the simplest (and favored by Fortune 500 corporations) logotype but can be enormously difficult to design - the designer is limited in the 'tricks of the trade' that are available and when using 'off-the-shelf' font work, your logo runs the risk of being uninspiring. On the other hand, a memorable logo font can help 'brand' your name and is generally easy to reproduce on a wide variety of promotional items such as presentation folders and brochure designs, as well as being almost universally adaptable throughout the wide range of marketing and advertising materials available. If we were to boil everything down to the main advantage of font-based logos it would be this - rather than promoting the image or theme of your business, the design promotes your name almost exclusively, and helps makes the name of your company memorable to potential clients and customers. (One caveat perhaps - it helps if the name featured in the logo is unique - if your company name is 'run of the mill' it's probably better to develop an icon design or use illustrations as your logo).

The most important aspect of a font logo (other than the font selected) is effective letter spacing, known in the design industry as kerning. A quick explanation - whenever letters are input into any design software package, the program takes an educated guess at how close each letter should be to its neighbor. Alas, these are only pre-programmed estimates - some fonts have different kerning parameters, and some programs do it better than others (Microsoft Word (though it should never be used as logo software) is the worst, Adobe Illustrator is better, though not perfect). Keep in mind that what looks good on your monitor may look hideous when enlarged to billboard size. The only way to effectively space typography is by ‘eyeball’ and by hand (that's why you need someone with graphic design training in the first place). Some letter combinations - V & A for example - require tighter spacing than say, M & N. Setting up correctly spaced typography is critical - poorly spaced letters will register in the viewer’s minds eye as an amateur-hour logo, even if they can’t quite put their finger on what’s wrong. That also applies to the ‘tag line’ of your design. These are the group of words, usually small, under the logo that generally describe what the featured company does, or how good they are at doing it. And while we’re talking about fonts, if you (or your designer are going to use off-the-shelf fonts (itself a perfectly acceptable solution) there are certain type faces that were never meant to be used as display. Chauncery Script is one. Papyrus was cool (about six thousand logos ago). A quick search of Google will show people's opinion about Comic Sans. As far as the number of fonts, always best to keep that to a minimum - a logo (and tag line) with anything more than two font styles risks looking like a ransom note.

In terms of the type of fonts used, your selection is unlimited but by understanding a little about what fonts 'say', you can communicate aspects of your company through the type of typography used. A serif font (Times Roman for example) has a traditional flavor, while a san-serif font tends to indicate a more modern identity. Italic fonts (slanted to the right) can indicate speed (and conversely, fonts slanted to the left - generally not a good idea - can indicate hesitation). How your company name is presented is also important - all lower case lettering can be indicative of an internet or web-based entity. Font or text logos can always be 'jazzed up' with shields, backgrounds or other design flourishes that help create a truly unique brand that carves out your little but of the small business marketing landscape. Esco Toys (above left) is an example of a text logo that has been inset into a design accent. It has the appearance of being an iconic logo (being encapsulated into a color field means that it can be incorporated into any medium). Dark Age (above right) is a text logo that uses a few special FX (in this case, glows) to give that extra 'something'. Both are perfect examples to illustrate that even if your new company identity is font or text driven, that doesn't mean that it needs to be boring.

Text & logo fonts design examples - from our galleries.