Logos by Medium

The other day I was having an interesting conversation about logos that seemed worth sharing. I was thinking about different media logos and how they were designed for the medium in which they were born. Take the New York Times or Washington Post (or any other newspaper for that matter). Their logos are long, generally a collection of a few words that stretches horizontally (this has caused me many headaches with Brand Tags). They, of course, were designed to live at the top of the paper so they had pretty of space to sprawl out.

Now move to TV and look at ABC, NBC or even CNN (who came later). These logos tend to be squareish, fitting the aspect ratio of the medium. Now move to the web and even mobile devices. It’s interesting to think about how logos are being designed for companies native to these conditions. Web logos, I feel, are generally rectangle (for whatever reason). The iPhone, however, only allows for squares. What is that going to mean? Are more people going to need identifiable marks? (And the iPhone isn’t the only thing, I realized that I had nothing good to identify Brand Tags with on Twitter when they asked for a square logo … I ended up going with a “b” that I am still not all that happy about.)

Anyhow, am sure designers have been thinking about this stuff for ages but it was interesting to me.

June 1, 2009