During the workshop of Ditigal media, we looked at elements that you need to create a modern logo. So what are those? I’ll tell you in this blog.
What elements do you need for a modern logo?
In my last blog I described some “rules” to create a good logo. With that came a tip for a modern logo: A good logo is timeless, too. It should stand up and still look current 10, 20, or even 50 years down the road.
So, that crosses of number one. Second, when we look at the logos of Coca-cola you’ll notice that during the years they’ve changed several times. What’s interesting is that in the 1950’s they’ve created a timeless logo already, but for some reason they kept changing it untill 1993 where they’ve used skeuomorphism. They integrated the bottle inside the logo and created gradients and shimmering.
Coca-cola finally decided to create a more modern logo in 2007. The elements for a logo like this are:
- Flat colours/ flat design; no use of gradients or skeuomorphism.
- Choice of colours; If you use colours that don’t match the logo will have a different look and feel than as probably wanted to.
- No drop shadows and outlines
- Use fonts; fonts that are easy to read and clean but not unprofessional.
Apart from the design elements that needs to be kept in mind, there is also another element that can help you create a modern logo; modern technology. With that I mean creating a logo in Illustrator so that it’s vector based. With that you can scale your logo as big and as small as you want without having quality loss.
Gestalt principles
Last but not least – I’ve learned this a long time ago – the use of gestalt principles (negative space, continuation, closure). It can take your logo to a whole other level. If we look at the WWF logo, they have used the principle closure. They made good use of white space and our eyes/brains can fill in the gaps so we see it as a complete panda. Companies/brands that are also using this principles are IBM, Beats by Dr. Dre, Adobe, Johnnie Walker and NBC. Their logos are timeless, clean but still effective and powerful.
Conclusion
Creating a modern logo is always a hard thing to do. You have to keep in mind want you want to represent, what you’re brand needs to tell people. But to keep up to date with the trends, creating a modern – and maybe timeless logo – has become a lot more easy.