In order to work well with the diverse requirements of digital and print media, a well-crafted logo should be adaptable to different sizes and orientations. From lockup variations providing flexibility in size and orientation to color variations catering to diverse backgrounds, let’s delve into the process of crafting effective logo variations for your clients.
Lockup Logo Variations
Lockup logos are the finalized “locked up” version of a logo. Lockups offer the flexibility needed to seamlessly integrate clients’ logos across many applications.
- Horizontal orientation works great for websites and headers.
- Vertical orientation often looks best for social profile images.
- Icons make great design elements: watermark, favicons, bullet points, and shapes, for example.
Color Logo Variations
The palette in which a logo is presented holds significant importance in maintaining a consistent brand image for clients. Full-color, single-color, and reversed-color versions provide flexibility with what color the logo can be placed on and how it can be printed.
- Full-color usually works best on a white/light background and can contain multiple colors.
- Single-color would be a version of the logo that only uses one color. Multiple different options could be provided, depending on your brand colors, but we recommend having at least a white and a black one. These are great when the printing method or budget restricts the number of colors, such as with embroidery.
- Reversed-color logos take a darker color (dark gray, navy, black, and similar) in the original logo and swap it for white so that this logo can be used over darker colored backgrounds.
Because the specific needs of each brand may vary, here’s a good rule-of-thumb: depending on your logo design, you may need more or fewer logo variations. Other variations may include a wordmark only (meaning there are no icons or imagery), logos with a tagline, and logos with abbreviated names.
This practical approach to logo variations ensures that a brand’s visual identity remains distinctive but also versatile, setting the brand apart from its market competitors.