Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Tbh, they look heavily derivative. Replace fish with a moose and voila! Separate company.

I think you have a singular riff down that will work well for some markets. But I would be hard pressed to believe these are separate companies rather than divisions of the same, given their brand logos.

Really inspiring.
Thanks

There are many wonderful little works of art here. That does not make them great logos.

By my count 29 of the 48 are either way too detailed for their own good, or too reliant on color, gradients, and/or shading. And especially – whoever signed off on Xona, Media Factory, and Surround should be taken out behind the woodshed.

Hawaii and fold it my top picks. great find and very inspiring!

Hrvoje

Trends for 2009 ?

The Twins Logo really inspired me. Using the 2 as an N, Genius! Good collection for the most part.

I think logo muat easy to implement on any kind media.. print or digital
Are they do it?

Fold It is just absolutely brilliant. There was that split second of “Wait, what am I looking… OHHH!”

I’m gonna have to go ahead and agree with the above posts, and say that the majority of these “logos” are as generic as they come. Slapping a gradient on an asymmetric circle and using some offbeat modern typeface seems to be considered a great logo these days. But what about in 1,5, or 10 years? A great mark should be everlasting. If I want a logo like one of these, I might as well head over to a site like CrowdSpring and get 50 different choices for minimum $.

Really nice Interactive logos..

@ MikeH

I took a trip over to Pentagram per your suggestion (never a bad idea as they are usually the shiznet), and lookie! A groovy typeface with transparencies and all! TRUVIA. I like the package design, but please: Tell me that’s going to be around in a few years? Hardly.

Maybe it’s planned obsolescence on their part, but I’m NOT impressed with that and a few others that Pgram is showing off (the philharmonic logo is atrocious). So by comparison, I don’t think you have convinced me of anything other than maybe Pgram could use some crowdspring action.

thanks for the collections

Rgds
Daya.D

Love the Twins one.

So simple, great typeface

very nice and inspiring collection.

Excellent compilation and I am really honored to get featured here a little bit with 1stwebdesigner.com logo design trends article :) Thanks!

The logos are really great but the company names are also very symbolic. So if you have a company name without such a basic it’s more difficult I guess to create a creative logo.
Most of them are also not recognizable if you have just seen it one/two times.

But beautiful for the eye ..
John

I love the logo of LINK – anyone knows what font they use?

They do look nice but way too many are too complicated for print…

That said – ‘Shocked’ and ‘Fold It’ are excellent

Nice list with many creative ‘logos’, but a good logo must have a 1- and 2-colour version that can be used in those cases when CMYK-print is not alternate. Many of the ‘logos’ above loses their functionality and its creative side when all gradients and shades are removed.

but hey, great inspiration..c”,

Logos should still work in monochrome so that they can be inverted to be printed onto paper media of white and black, letterheads & fax’s.

You also have to consider other textiles for branding; t-shirt embroidery, car/van stickers etc.

Any logo which doesn’t hold up to that in my opinion fails.

It’s ok to have fancy gradients and shadows provided you can put a black overlay (or inverted white) and still portray the same message.

Nice creativity, but hardly high end branding. The kind of thing that would work really nicely as a blog logo … but almost definately not as an actual company, in my oppinion. But then proper bradning can cost millions, so we can’t expect too much from logos that have clearly been grabbed from a forum/logo generator somewhere! :p

———————–

prettyusable.net – Web design blog

Grat examples, I’m a fan of logo art…

Some great logos and innovative use of type… v.good
Tim

I regocnize a lot of the logo’s from logopond.com.
You guys made a nice collection.
Great inspiration

oragmi -> origami IMO (second paragraph)

Anyway this is very nice source of inspiration (as well as the whole website, good job!). I’ve already seen a few of those logos, many of them are amazing and indeed very inspiring.

Well done as always, thanks for this!

You guys are starting to scare me, 4 hours after I start on something an article appears here, keep it up ;p

Excelente selección.
De los logos más creativos que he visto en el último tiempo.

Good work!

Scanned the images… Some looked good, some just ok. Scanned the comments but didn’t read them all so please excuse me if this point was already made…

Without knowing the nature of the brands “behind” the logos, the true quality of these logos is meaningless. As some of the above comments pointed out, anyone can pick a cool type face, add a gradient, etc. but that doesn’t make it right. True good design isn’t just visual.

That said, I understand that this post was to “inspire”. I’m just not so sure I want to be inspired by what might actually be poor design.

I hate ones like the ‘Shocked’ logo – it totally marks the company down as being a parochial US organisation – every other country uses a different electrical standard, and different plugs to the US

It seems that such collection of logos already exists…
Go and see …..>
http://abduzeedo.com/great-examples-colorful-gradients-and-3d-effects-logos

This collection is far so good!

this is a great collection! thanks for sharing!

Sorry, but for me, there´s only a couple of logos in this collection. My favorites: Twins, Hawaii and Banana Films. The other ones are cute icons and most of all seems to be grabbed form a template web store.

I’d like to see these logo’s in black and white, in multiple sizes and on several different media. Most of these logos will fail when they get off the LCD screen.

Very nice collection you gathered here some very clean and well thought out designs. Very inspiring ideas to keep in mind when redoing or creating a new logo or trademark.

There are a lot of really nice logos here. There are also a number that, while attractive, fail as logos.

The true test for for a company logo is this: Fax it to yourself and see how it looks. Yes folks, people do still use fax machines on a regular basis. While I think Fold It is a very clever and beautiful graphic, it fails as a logo. Others, like Coevia and The Swan would work quite well.

I think my favorite is Shocked. It’s simple yet very creative, and it could work in a one-color print job.

AWESOME.

Very creative, the umbrellar is the best.

Nice, graphically appealing work. However, most venture pretty far from staple philosophies of logo design. As many have noted, there is a heavy reliance on color or gradients in order for the mark to work. That’s generally a bad idea. A good logo should still be a good logo as a solid, 1-color mark. It’s should also maintain legibility when reproduced small. Many of these would not.

I mean all of that constructively. It is very nice work and I’m not trying to “throw stones.”

These are beautiful logos and great inspiration. Most importantly, however, is that they aren’t boring. It seems the “experts” making comments don’t quite understand that times are a changin’ – companies don’t need to be represented in simplicity anymore and, quite frankly, assuming such is just restricting the market. The internet is so widespread now that fax machines are, and rightly should be, obsolete. That’s what full-color scanners and email are for (and it’s faster and cheaper, too). If someone is printing in black-and-white, it would seem that quality is obviously not an issue (especially if done via a laser printer). Advertising is not done in monochrome and if you’re communicating with someone through prints in black-and-white there is a good chance they are already familiar with your company. Regardless, if any of these that you say “fail as logos” are going to be printed at poor quality the designer could simply just use the text.

A logo working in one colour isn’t just about printing: if you can reduce a logo to its most basic form and it remains unique and memorable, then it’s a winner – sort of like taking off someone’s makeup and realising they’re still gorgeous.

As for the comment, “Advertising is not done in monochrome”… check out a newspaper.

Very cool list…

Have any of you pros ever thought that some of these logos can ALSO work as solid in one color or maybe you can not see the actually design itself because your so worried about the gradient or color issues.

Personally I’d rather have a logo that was robust enough to work in any medium, even if my business was primarily on the web.

I agree, many logos here rely too much on gradients, bright color combinations and transparency effects. Most of these will not translate nicely on non-web media, for example decals or store-front signage. Some of these logos are very creative and cool though, I specially like the ones with minimal shapes, using one or two colors. -Henry

Some good logos! Thanks!

I love fatmoose and bananasfilms!

Don’t you guys ever sleep…lol I like the contents you share, one of the best blogs out there…

Terrance Charles

Sean nails it… has to work as a 1 color mark (which more on this page would work if youd think about it). Who ever thought 3 Leaves was brilliant when sitting right next to it is Twi2ns – and I don’t mean to be rude – but wow. I’m about sick though of birds, wings, leaves, showing up as screened images in logos. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery until everybody is doing it.

Studio Eight, Bananas Films, Fat Moose, Swan, Twi2ns nail it.

Rainfall – close – to in love with their own logo. One less raindrop and you’d be there. Same with Coeva.

But this brings up a good point – Say you have 100% control over your mark and arent interested in a 1-color logo. Do you not have the right to do whatever the hack you want? You know – not everyone wants to advertise in Newspaper – heck – newspapers are going by the wayside.

That being said – Dynamics Labis a beautiful logo and 100% fairplay under that assumption.

Sorry I’m rough around the edges. They are all good work.

With respect – I don’t know if Studio 8 didn’t do a much better job with it.

Ok, I don’t understand all the fail comments here. Designers often maintain this false belief that a companies exposure and psychological reach begins and ends with visual branding – it simply doesn’t. Visual branding is just 1 in 1000 little points of contact that influence customer loyalty. You’re most likely seeing these logos on an LCD – that e partially xplains the color choices, background color, contrast etc. Any of these logos, with appropriate modifications, will work fine in B/W print.

And the ultimate test of a logo design is to fax it to myself? Are you serious? Who in the world has ever received a fax and said, “Wow! Just look at that awesome logo these guys have. I’m gonna buy 2 of everything they have just ’cause their branding ROCKS!!!” Come on. Visual branding doesn’t need to look stellar on the copy of a print of jpeg of a fax. I think we as designers could get over ourselves just a little bit and remember that, ultimately, what we bring to the table is limited at best. Customer service, product quality, word of mouth advertising, intellectual capital, product selection, market penetration…this is the stuff that builds and sustains a business, not a flashy logo with just the right typeface.

Wow, our designed ATC Research logo on smashinmagazine, feels good. :D Thank you.

Castle Print is the best.

Creative, yes.
Practical, some.

Not adding anything new here, but if you strip the colors and effects from most of these logos they fall apart, and a logo shouldn’t need any “modifications”, as some say, to work. It’s not about faxes or small sizes or whatever – a strong mark should retain its integrity when rendered in black and white, without any Photoshop effects.

Look beyond Logopond, look at Logo Lounge books or any logo book from Rockport and you’ll find plenty of beautiful, inspiring logos.

This “inspiring” collection should at least be taken with a grain of salt.

Beautiful, some of them are full of colors. I love it.

cafemelody logo , perfect !!

wow great article, must bookmark this! ^^,

Some solid choices, notably Hawaii, Castle Print, Bananas Films and Studio 8. The rest are largely forgettable.

Thanks you so much for showing the Alliance For Arts and Culture logo here! We’re quite proud of it.

There seems to be a bit of criticism of some of the logos and their respective “printability”. This was a concern for us when designing the logo as it had to work well on the client’s website as well as in all of their print media. We have written an article about some of our design challenges here:

The Alliance For Arts and Culture Logo

You guys rock!

Who said media Factory was a cool logo? That sunk with the Yellow Submarine over 30 years ago!

Love the Shocked logo, is brilliant !!!

There no chance to make better logo for Studio 8.

It is very very special……..

Rgds,
srinu
+91.996.699.5356

Some really good work here, some less so, but all attractive.

Without having read ALL of the comments, I feel it’s a bit hard to judge any logo out of context. The question is: is it a good fit for the company in question? Maybe it’s a trendy, Web 2.0 company and that approach is perfectly appropriate. Maybe it’s a bank, and it’s really not.

In any case, I agree that any logo needs to address the needs of being used in print collateral, letterhead, reversed, etc. Many of these logos would be very hard to use like that (tho admittedly, not as difficult as it would have been once upon a time) assuming that the designer didn’t also provide an alternate version for those uses. Having had to use difficult logos in design, both web and print, I know how important that kind of utility is, and it’s something that’s hard to judge until you actually see it in use.

What a surprise to see one of my logos here! [Saturn Electronics]
I am really happy to see it here in this great collection of logos!
Smashing Thanks! :)

Very nice!

expose (April 1st, 2009, 11:35 pm)
Font is bree
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/type-together/bree/

dhanshu

Love them, thanks :)

One or two nice designs here no question but many seem to have taken a significant influence from already existing logos. While I do think that a truly great logo design should transcend any medium, I also feel that lower quality platforms (fax etc) are being phased out in place of high quality and high availability print sources.

Kit Peverley – Phar Fetched Designs