The Wordmark
Looking at the beginners’ guide to what is a Wordmark, it gives a noticeably clear understanding into logotype. A Wordmark is a logo design solely of the word of the brand. These logo designs are simple yet clear and memorable while including the right typography and spacing. All those factors are important when making your own Wordmark as it is apart if the face from your brand and will make your brand memorable to consumers.
We can see all these factors in famous word makes such as Coca-Cola, Google, and Calvin Klein. They have vital details we can use within making our own Wordmark such as the right colour to reflect the brand, their use of San serif or serif establish a tone to the brand along with typography as well.
Trying to create a memorable wordmark requires you to think about what your brand is communicating to consumers as which can be quite difficult without having a visual representation.
This visual representation to main designers can be describe as purest form of a logo, so with that in mind it should be the form of branding that should be assessable to everyone to understand.
What makes a strong Wordmark?
- You should include a distinctive/bright colour to the typeface– A wordmark should not have other elements on top of one another and a strong colour should create an impact.
- You should have short and easy brand name– the most ideal wordmark should try to have one word for the name as this helps for the recognition for the brand. If your brand name includes multiple words, then it would be best to use a letter-mark as it allows you to have your origin brand name while having a strong Wordmark.
- It should be ideal to use for your logo on different mediums– Either this could be to go on a background or an image, a wordmark is great as it allows you to use many platforms for your brand while not worrying about legibility of a symbol.
Finding the right typeface
Looking into what is the best typeface, I came across I quote I liked which states, “Words carry meaning; typefaces convey character.” This quote by Michael Evamy is remarkably interesting to me as it is the best shirt explanation on highlighting why a typeface is important when creating your wordmark.
Your typeface will play a big part on how you will communicate your brand to consumers, so to help with the choosing of your typeface, look at the values your brand wants to convey and compare that with a selection of typefaces and see which typeface conveys that message. You should also consider Sans Serif or Sans in your typeface as San serif will establish a modern look to your wordmark while Serif would have more of a traditional route.
The Task
Using our names, we had to detect where the ascenders and descenders were present throughout. It was interesting seeing where was where in my name when different typefaces were used.
Typeface Style
When choosing the layout of the typeface the number one key is to make sure your wordmark is legible for a consumer. This could be done by the weight of your typeface, is it bold or textured; would it have features like curves and will the case of your typeface be in lower or upper case.
Adding a character feature.
You can see this in some notable brands such as Vans or Canon where there is one letter that is more emphasised than the rest which can be very eye catching. It can also add onto the recognition to your brand as well. Adding the character feature can help you explore more routes for your wordmark and can help you get more creative as well develop more ideas. Be creative with spacing and letter casing
When designing a wordmark, considering your spacing should be an element to think about as the spacing within your wordmark contributes to the readability of your wordmark. Does your wordmark work better with less spacing or more? or does the spacing help the angle and weight of wordmark?
These are factors you should think about when choosing your spacing.
Overall
Word marks display a clean and simple outlook for your brand while also boosting your brands recognition with consumers. Having this overall gives you wordmark a timeless feel.
However, it should not be a short and effortless process, a wordmark should have you pay attention to trivial details while trying to create a simplistic design that converts your whole brand; making sure every character is perfect.