Logotype or pictorial mark: which suits a new brand

The three forms that exist

Whatever gets delivered to you as a logo is one of these three:

• Logotype. Text only, with letterforms drawn or modified for that specific brand. Google, Coca-Cola.
• Pictorial mark. A shape with no text. Nike, Apple, the bird.
• Combination. Text plus a mark, both usable together and separately. For most businesses this is the right answer.

A combination is not more expensive but it is harder, because the designer has to make the mark stand alone while not looking bolted on beside the text. On a small budget, asking a cheap designer for a combination usually produces a word with a piece of clip art next to it.

Why a Persian logotype is harder than a Latin one

This is where most of the mistakes happen. The Persian script is connected, so unlike Latin you cannot open up letter spacing freely; anything you do to a joining point damages legibility. Stretching the connector is not a solution either and has no place in digital text.

Three further practical constraints worth knowing before you commission anything:

• The number of usable weights in Persian typefaces is far smaller than in Latin. A logotype that needs seven weights usually cannot be built in Persian.
• Dots. Persian is full of them, and at small sizes they are the first thing to merge. A logo that looks excellent on a monitor can be unreadable on a stamp or a printed letterhead.
• Font licensing. Many free Persian typefaces do not permit modification or commercial use, and a logotype is by definition a modification. Ask before you start, not after printing ten thousand business cards.

The third is the only item on this list that can turn into a legal problem, and it is the one asked about least.

If the brand runs in two scripts

Many businesses here carry both a Persian and a Latin name. That needs two logotypes, not one. Rendering the Persian logotype in Latin using the same typeface does not work, because letter proportions, x-height and the rhythm of the two scripts differ.

The right approach is to commission both at the start so they are designed together and read as one family. Ordering the Latin version six months later almost always produces two different logos that merely share a colour.

The tests we run before final approval

A logo always looks good in the delivery file, because it is large and on white. Run these five tests on anything you are handed:

• At 32 pixels. If it turns to mush, your favicon will be a coloured smudge. Google recommends a square favicon larger than 48 by 48 pixels, but what the user sees is the small rendering.
• Single colour black. If it loses meaning without colour, you will struggle with stamps, engraving and one colour print.
• Over a busy photograph. You need a version with a background or an outline, and it is better to receive it up front.
• Printed on ordinary paper. Screen colour is not print colour, and some colours simply do not reproduce.
• At narrow width. In a mobile header the logo may be 120 pixels wide; a horizontal version and a compact version both need to exist.

All five take ten minutes and head off most of what goes wrong later. Colour choice is its own subject and we wrote it up in colour psychology in branding.

Free logo makers and AI generators

Online logo tools have two problems and neither is quality. First, the output usually comes from a library of ready made forms that may have been sold to ten other businesses at the same time. Second, their Persian support is weak and they frequently set the letters disconnected or reversed.

For a new business that wants to start next week, a free logo maker is a defensible temporary answer. Just do not use it where changing it later is expensive: signage, printed packaging, an official stamp.

When not to buy a logo at all

If the brand name is not final, logo design is early. If your field of work may change in three months, it is early. And if your entire budget covers either a logo or a website, build the website. Customers buy from a site that is fast and clear, not from a logo.

A sequence that has worked on real projects: the name, then a simple logotype, then the website, and a pictorial mark once the brand is known and there is a reason for one. If you later want the logo animated, animating a brand mark is far easier to build on a clean logotype than on a busy symbol.

Things that should be in the final delivery and often are not: a vector file, a single colour version, horizontal and vertical lockups, a clear space rule around the mark, and colour codes for screen and for print. The full list of what we hand over is in visual identity design.

Common questions

What is a logotype?

A logo made only from the brand name, with letterforms drawn or adjusted for that brand. It is not the same as typing the name in an existing font; the difference is in the adjustments.

Logotype or pictorial mark?

For a brand nobody knows yet, a logotype or a combination. A symbol only works once the audience has learned that the shape means you, and teaching that takes time and budget.

What is different about designing a Persian logotype?

The script is connected, so free letter spacing is not available; dots merge at small sizes; and most Persian font licences forbid the letter modification a logotype requires.

Which files should I receive?

At minimum an editable vector file, single colour and horizontal and vertical versions, colour codes for screen and print, and a short clear space guide. If all you got was a PNG, what you bought cannot be used in print.