Corporate logos
Main logo: APIS Capital Management
Project: Iconic corporate logo design treatment for a financial management group.
More: Corporate logo gallery

Corporate logos generally feature highly simplified graphics or symbols that depict an aspect of the company or product portrayed. These graphics are usually abstract in concept but can also feature a reasonably accurate depiction of an idea, concept or item. Generally speaking, it's the treatment of the image, as well as the subject matter, that defines an corporate logo. Iconic and text treatments are the most common design styles utilized, and is probably the type of design that comes to mind if you were asked to describe "what is a logo?" Despite their relative simplicity, corporate 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 and experienced designer who is able to understand both the conceptual and technical limitations of developing such a design.

When developing an corporate logo, the 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 more complex logos, designers try to avoid adding blends, gradients and other nifty special effects in order to keep the mark as clean and linear as possible. Corporate logos usually feature solid geometric shapes, arranged in a way that very quickly describes the company portrayed (think Apple, Nike, Adidas, etc) - and are probably the most effective in building brand recognition. Utilizing an corporate design has certain technical advantages over their more complex cousins, the most notable being scalability. When your logo is to be featured at a small size, or in low-resolution reproduction, simple logos hold together reasonably well and are still recognizable at first glance. Corporate logos are sometimes developed with a text and separate icon portion and the the text portion can be dropped at a later date, once your logo has been well exposed. Due to their relative simplicity, corporate logos are the best choice for certain applications - embroidery for one example, flash animation for another - and these are the kinds of designs that have the fastest retention factor for your viewing audience.

Simple logos for a stable corporate image.

Simple corporate logos are favored by companies that are trying to brand under a flag of stability - banks and accounting firms for example - and wish to avoid cute visual cliches and woo-hoo graphics that become dated in a relatively short time. As these designs avoid trends and fads, simple logos have the longest shelf-life and appeal to the widest market possible - extremely important for companies that are concerned about general population demographics.

Developing a simple corporate logo also allows clients to take advantage of spot colour (most of the designs on this page were developed as two colour designs). This is often more economical than full-colour printing, but more importantly to design purists, allows for complete colour accuracy across all marketing and advertising material.

Corporate logo gallery

Nexus Funding Corporation. Corporate logos aren't just abstract shapes without any meaning. This design for a funding corporation is a graphic representation of a bank to business handshake.	Exxon Mobil Joliet Anniversary. When working with logo extensions, we have to consider the original graphic that's been established. The additional graphics have to work with the original, not against it. View the design process for this project.	SIREPA. We can still fit a lot of detail into a corporate work up. This design had to depict the various modes of transportation covered. To keep the design as clean as possible, everything was given a linear treatment.
Klikop. A deceptively simple design for a hosting company in the Netherlands. If you look closely you should see the computer mouse. Nice little corporate logo that is extremely adaptable.	Reed Kotler Music. For this music company, we had to include several disparate icons while still keeping the logo iconic and uncluttered. Font choice was kept to simple sans serif.	North Coast Reality Group. Even though this logo is fairly pictorial, the graphics are simple enough to make the design completely adaptable to a wide range of uses and sizes.
Electric Lemonade. Simple icon that features the company name and concept. Even though this is a nice corporate logo, it's still modern enough to avoid the boredom factor.	Express Type & Graphics. This logo was designed as to be adaptable for a wide range of uses. The icon and text portions of the designs can be used together, or separately.	Sight Effects. Simple logos don't have to be visually boring. This design manages to fit the company initials, an eyeball and the core activity into an extremely simple design.

Corporate Logos

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