1. COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Mark Design
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

2. What is a Mark?:
Marks are visual images used to identify a company, organization, person or event.
Mark designs typically fall into one of the following categories: - Word Marks - Letter Marks - Symbol Marks - Logo Marks

3. Types of mark designs: Word Mark
Primary element of the design is the name of the business.
Conveys the name of the business through the style of the font, colours or embellishments.
Fonts are chosen and stylized to suit the type of business.

4. Examples of Word Marks:

5. Types of mark designs: Letter Mark: Letters form name in type
Used to quickly identify a company, often to shorten name
Advantages: letterforms are readable; short, recognizable name
Disadvantages: more costly to promote, heavy visual competition (letters)

6. Examples of Letter Marks:

7. Types of mark designs: Symbol Mark Marks without type
Advantages: unique, simple, compact, quick impact
Disadvantages: costly to explain and promote, confusion with other symbols

8. Examples of Symbol Marks:

9. Types of mark designs: Logo Mark Symbol and words used together
Advantages: unique, easy recognition
Disadvantages: can be very complex, hard to update, challenge when resizing
The symbol reflects something about the personality of the business.
This type of mark design is most widely used.

10. Examples of Logo Marks:

11. Examples of Logo Marks:

12. Elements of Logo Design CAPTURE PERSONALITY
Logo should clearly express a company’s identity.
Should tell people who they are, what they do, how they work and how they want to be seen by the rest of the world.

13. Elements of Logo Design SIMPLICITY
People are drawn to clean, uncluttered logos because they can easily recognize it at a glance.
Busy, crowded logos with intricate details or elaborate pictures are distracting.

14. Elements of Logo Design PROPORTIONALITY
A logo should function as one complete unit.
Width shouldn’t be much greater than the height.
Logos that are too tall are hard to read when reduced or enlarged.
The design should work well on any sized media – from business card to billboard.

15. Elements of Logo Design COLOUR PALETTE
80% of the world’s most recognizable logos use either 1 or 2 colours.
Use 1 to 3 colours to keep things simple
More than three colours is distracting to the eye and less memorable.
Colour should express personality of company.
Look at your industry to see trends (i.e. blue is common for tech. companies)

16. Elements of Logo Design FONTS
Choose a font that suits the personality of your business.
Sans Serif fonts
Clean and easy-to-read
Two-thirds of most logos use sans serif fonts
Franklin
Tahoma
Century

17. Elements of Logo Design FONTS
Serif fonts
More serious looking fonts
Used more for a traditional or classic design
Times
Goudy
Georgia

18. Elements of Logo Design ORIGINALITY
Distinguish your company from its competitors.
Should be unique, one-of-a-kind.
Should be “ownable” – you want to be able to trademark the logo design.

19. Elements of Logo Design PRACTICAL, USEABLE, ADAPTABLE
Too many colours will cost you a fortune every time you need to print business cards or letterhead.
Should be able to easily convert to black and white.
Should be created in vector format so you can resize when needed without loss of image quality.

20. Elements of Logo Design PRACTICAL, USEABLE, ADAPTABLE
These “photo” logos will cause problems when scaling to a larger size than the original file.
Will become pixelated and lose quality when scaled larger.

21. Where to start?
Browse the Internet to find some companies in the same industry.
Look at their logos and determine what you like or don’t like about them.
Decide how the name will appear in the design.
All capitals? e.g. ALICE’S Coffee Pot
Abbreviated? e.g. ACP
Unusual spelling? e.g. Alice’s Koffee Pot