One of my favorite logo design techniques involves the clever use of negative space. The FedEx logo is the most famous example of this (if you’re unfamiliar with it, look at the shape that is formed between the E and the x). Here are a few more excellent examples of logos that make use of negative space:
Designing a logo is a complex and often misunderstood process. Hours upon hours of research, planning and sketching goes into designing a logo. Typeface consideration is crucial. Days can be spent on selecting the perfect typeface or handcrafting your own type. It also needs to be considered whether the logo can stand on its own with typography or if iconography should be introduced. Basic design principles such as gestalt and balance need to be considered. And all of these decisions need to be made with a strong concept in mind that carries the brand well.
Sometimes you’re lucky and the first logo concept is the winner and sometimes the perfect logo concept comes to you after you’ve completed 100+ variations of sketches. The beauty of this process is that you become more well versed and experienced with each design you complete. And as they say ‘practice makes perfect‘. You can use what you’ve learned about this visual language to come up with even more clever and successful ways of communicating the concept!
This is such a cool concept! I’ve never really thought about it before (although I did know about the Fed-Ex one) and I love learning new design-y stuff like this.
Glad it got you thinking more about it. Watch, now that you’ve read about it, you might even notice even more logos with hidden messages!
Love Jacob Weaver’s…the martini glass in the cat’s tail is very clever! The Two Knives is really fun too.
xoxo,
Jules of Canines & Couture
Love that Paul Saskin logo. And really enjoyed this post. It is refreshing to hear see others blogging about good design. :) Thanks for sharing! Xo, M&K at BT
I’m happy that others are as interested in good design as I am! Thanks for commenting.
I love negative-space design! It’s always so clever, makes me jealous I didn’t come up with it :)
And your right, logo development is such a long and tedious process, it’s one of the parts of design I struggle with the most. But after you spend 100 hour son that one stupid logo and you “get it right” it was all worth it!