Digital Branding: The Rise of Responsive Logos 101

Do You Know What Responsive Logos Are?

Responsive design has been associated with streamlining a myriad of contents and its layout to fit different screen sizes. While this is true, responsiveness goes beyond layout, and other design details including the logo of the brand should be able to adapt in an efficient way, without sacrificing the branding and identity.

Responsive logos use different responsive design principles to edit out the logo in stripping out details and elements to correspond with the screen size. The idea is to maintain legibility and brand integrity across all brand applications.

Why Do Companies Need Responsive Logos?

Responsive logos make up an important part of web development and eCommerce design for businesses. In a world where technology is continuously arising with screens in different shapes and sizes, the need to adapt is no longer an option but an obvious responsibility that brands, especially those who need digital marketing, must highly consider.

Branding is beyond visual design. It encompasses all things communication, where colors and style have a psychological effect on how customers feel a certain way, and the message is used to make customers think a certain way. In succeeding in the digital platform, adaptation of logos to efficiently fit without it being stripped of its vital elements while still being recognizable is important for all brands. Since we consider logos as the face of our brand, it’s only natural that they follow the responsive evolution of websites.

In addition to that, Google favors businesses that are mobile-friendly, and an inkling of a sign that labels your brand as unresponsive must be avoided at all costs.

3 Tips for Designing Responsive Logos

Non-responsive logos can be complicated and if there is a need to retain the complex logo design for branding purposes, an alternate version can be used.

A great example is the logo design of Walt Disney. In most marketing applications, the entire “Walt Disney Pictures” logo is displayed, especially before a Disney-produced movie begins. Whilst on other applications such as its website, it gets cut down to just “Disney”, retaining its own hand-written font style that we all know.

Simplicity in logo design can still bear the same tradition and brand values that we want to apply. Keep in mind that the logo must be clear even in different sizes, load quickly, scale properly and still have the maximum impact that we want to implement.

Ways to Simplify Logo:

– Modern Minimalist

– Fewer Details for Greater Impact

The logo should be versatile enough to be narrowed down to its bare essentials, without losing its branding and identity. It must work in both horizontal and vertical formats, to become adaptable in a variety of mediums and placements. To keep it short and straight to the point, the more flexible the design is, the more places it can appear – leading to a wider reach and higher impact.

Keep in mind that the brand identity and recognition should not suffer when adjustments are made to the logo.

How to scale logos effectively:

– Trimming down of details

Without making drastic changes to the original logo, NOAA made an incremental reduction to its logo by removing the texts around it and finally removing the wordmark whilst keeping the symbol.

– Discard the Wordmark

If the original logo has a recognizable symbol in it, another smart way of altering the logo is by ditching the wordmark. This guarantees that the logo is still clearly visible, without the risk of distorting any of the elements. There’s no point in including texts if it can’t be read when the logo is scaled down to smaller resolutions.

– Simplify the Logo

Another way of altering the logo is by removing the logo mark. However, do make sure that the wordmark is distinct and still recognizable.

– Make it abstract

If there is a need to retain all elements, another way to simplify the logo is by making it abstract. This way, the logo is still clearly recognizable on smaller screens.

– Vertical Stacking

Through vertical stacking, the logomark and wordmark are stacked upon each other, making it work well on any device that it is viewed on – especially those with limited spaces. Horizontal layout suits desktop viewing, but for smartphones and tablets, vertical stacking is the way to go.

Since the number of digital devices are constantly escalating, the need to have a responsive logo is inevitable. Let’s forget the notion that the logo is simply an icon found on the top-left corner of the website; responsive logos have their own predefined rules that let it automatically adjust its size and design, depending on the resolution of the screen.

Switch from your traditional logo to a responsive logo now so your brand doesn’t have to worry about adapting to all sorts of platforms and mediums in the future.

How does your logo respond? Call us at +65 6841 1680 or send us an email at enquiry@verzdesign.com for a free consultation!