Responsive Logo Scaling

In marketing, you hear time and again that consistency is everything. Use the same fonts, colors, and logos to make your brand instantly recognizable. But did you know, you can benefit from having more than one logo?

It may seem counter intuitive, but having a few different versions of your logo, barring color versions, can really help your brand look as complete as possible. There are instances where your logo needs to be massive and times when it should be very small. There are occasions when you want to show your logo to brand new audiences who are not familiar with your company and what you do just as there are times when you are speaking to your own employees or regular customers who are already very familiar. Having different logos for different uses can help your brand be as flexible as possible.

The best way to illustrate this is with responsive logo scaling. Your main logo may be beautiful but it might also be quite detailed. Those details don’t always translate well when printed small or with less than crisp printing methods. This is where logo scaling comes in. Many brands build out their logo families to include simplified versions of their logos for special case uses. Your main logo should be in full detail. Then you can create slightly more simplified logos for uses based on size or print method. You may even have a version that is simply an icon or a monogram for use in very small places like favicons (the icons that show on the browser tab for your website) or for tiny product tags.

Below are a few examples of famous logo families that show how scaling is used.

In the Walt Disney logo, you can see the logo loses slightly more detail with each step down in the scale. The smallest scale is simply the 'D' which is iconic enough to stand on its own.

In the Levi's logo, the logo loses more detail with each step but the shape of the logo remains. The shape has become iconic enough for the brand to simply use the small red tag because of their history of the red tag on their jeans.

In the Warner Bros. logo, you see a scaling down of detail with the shape remaining. The final logo in the smallest of the scale is inverted to help with legibility in its small size.

As you can see, this method is used by many big-name companies and at varying levels of change. Some have several logo iterations and some only have one or two versions. It all depends on the nature of your business and what possible locations your logo is going to be used.

If you’re interested in rebranding or in establishing a set of scaled logos with an existing logo, feel free to reach out! I’d love to talk to you about your brand dreams and help you put your best brand forward!