The principle of an effective logotype design: Legibility and Understandability

Continuing with the 3 last blog posts, today I would like to share the 4th principle of an effective logotype design that I have found from my research.

When you want to design an effective logotype, you should make it legible and understandable

Because it is easier to remember when we understand

and human tends to forget things that they do not understand.

Below is one of an example of illegible design that may not suit for a logotype design.

Tips for understandable visual design:

• Use familiar visual.

• Legible letter is more understandable.

Tips for legibility design:

• Make letters clear what each of them is.

• Ascenders and Descenders help. And simplicity is the key.

• Make sure it is clear in all conditions, dark and bright background, small and large sizes. (Because logotype will be reproduced in various media, it is important to be more careful.)

• Remember that space between letters will look smaller when the letters are bright and placed in dark background.

• Remember that small size makes very bold typeface illegible because the space inside the letter is filled in.

Measurement: Test with people if they can identify the letter, the word, the name and can guess the character or not.