Designing a textless logo for a brand is a risky decision one can take while branding. The textless logo is a sign that the brand is highly confident about its value and uniqueness from similar brands. Brands usually use both wordmarks and symbols to represent their brand visually. Having only a symbol as a logo is only possible when a brand becomes well-established.
A textless logo can only work if the consumers can successfully recognize and recall the design components that make up a brand's identity. This process, however, usually takes time. Brands such as McDonald, Nike, and Apple all used text with their logo when they were at the initial stage of their business and in their initial branding process. Once they knew that their symbol was well-recognized by the audience, they decided to use the logo without the letter mark.
For a young brand, using a textless logo is impossible, especially in the digital age of mobile apps, as the app icons represent the brand.
Why Well-Established Companies Use Textless Logos?
Although successful brands don't need to remove texts from logos or use textless logos, as they have already gained enough attention and created a powerful existence in the market and in the audience's mind, textless logos are iconic. They can be commanding and powerful global brand recognition. It can be a transcending language for the audience. It is also considered to be a perfect logo for global applications. When a textless logo is familiar enough to the audience, it is more personal than a corporate logo, as it emotionally connects with the audience.
Let's check famous brands and how they switched from wordmarks to textless logos.
Nike
The Nike logo was designed by a student Carolyn Davidson. She created it for a price of 35, and this simple yet unique logo became one of the world's instantly recognizable textless logos once it was well established. In the mids of the 90s, the logo accompanied a wordmark of Nike in Futura Bold font. The swoosh in the logo became an iconic mark all alone, and the need to state the name of the brand became redundant, and people immediately recognized the logo without the letter mark. That's what the power of logo is.
Instagram is a young and fresh company compared to Nike or other brands. As the brand is app-based, it has been designed as a textless logo. Because mobile users use the app icon frequently, the brand has gained much recognition quickly. So Instagram has less need to use the wordmark as the icon is ingrained into the consumer's mind.
Founded in 2020, the brand primarily relies on the mobile app icon. Instagram 2010 was launched with a camera icon, and later they dropped a new logo with an analog camera in 2016 to give it a modern and aesthetic look.
Take Away
With the massive marketing budget and ubiquity worldwide, building brand recognition and association with the textless logo was a piece of cake for these brands. However, every brand has to start from scratch, and their success stories and investment in logo design prove the long-term brand's value. If you're looking forward to building a logo that can be successful now and in the long run, Tailored Logo Design, one of the best logo design services in California, can provide custom and unique logo designs that can help you with solid branding.
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