Daily notes from the Lab.
Logo design, brand identity, and the technology that builds them. One post a day, evidence over vibes. Follow along by RSS.
Designing App Icons For 3D And Augmented Reality Screens
A flat icon that looks confident on a phone can look flat in every sense once it has to sit in a 3D space with real depth and light.
2 min readThe Founder Logo Trap: Why Founders Judge Marks Badly
The founder has seen the logo a thousand times before launch, which is exactly why their gut reaction cannot be trusted anymore.
2 min readTrademark Classes: Why A Logo Does Not Own Its Category
A registered trademark protects a specific category of goods and services, not the shape or the color by itself, everywhere, forever.
2 min readSeasonal Logos: How Far A Holiday Version Can Actually Stray
A pumpkin on the logo for October is charming until nobody can tell it apart from the logo the rest of the year at a glance.
2 min readClear Space: The Empty Area That Is Part Of Your Logo
Clear space is not blank margin left over by accident, it is the minimum breathing room a logo needs to read clearly every time.
2 min readRedesign Or Rebrand: Which One Your Logo Actually Needs
Most companies reach for a full rebrand when a targeted redesign would fix the actual problem for a fraction of the cost and risk.
2 min readWhat A Bad Company Name Costs The Logo Stuck Representing It
A generic or confusing name puts limits on a logo before a single sketch happens, and no amount of design skill fully makes up the difference.
2 min readThe Unsearchable Logo: Distinctiveness In A Visual World
Point a phone camera at a generic logo and reverse image search returns nothing useful, which is a distinctiveness test most brands never take.
2 min readWhat Decades Of Small Logo Tweaks Teach About Consistency
Line up any long running logo across fifty years and it barely moved each decade, which is exactly why it still works today.
2 min readCo-Branding Two Logos Without Either One Losing Itself
Two logos sharing one surface usually means one of them loses, and a good co-brand pairing decides in advance which parts each mark can give up.
2 min readPackaging First: Designing A Logo That Wins On A Shelf
A logo tested only on a laptop screen has never been tested where it actually has to work: three feet away, next to five competitors.
2 min readMake It Pop: The Client Note That Ruins More Logos Than Taste
Make it pop sounds harmless, but it usually means add more, and more is rarely what a distinctive, ownable logo actually needs.
2 min readOptical Centering: Why Logos Need Eyes, Not Just Math
Mathematically centered logos often look wrong on screen, because the eye judges weight and shape, not coordinates on a grid.
2 min readWhy Some Logos Ship With Their Own Construction Blueprint
A construction grid is not decoration on a logo presentation, it is proof the proportions can be rebuilt exactly, by anyone, forever.
2 min readDark Mode Logos: One Mark Built For Two Backgrounds
Half your audience sees your logo on a dark background now, and a straight color inversion is usually not the fix it looks like.
2 min readIcon, Wordmark, Or Combination: Picking The Right Lockup
Most brands pick a logo type by copying whoever they admire, not by matching the format to how and where the mark actually gets used.
2 min readLogo Animation: When Motion Helps And When It Is Confetti
Most animated logos add motion because it is available, not because it helps anyone remember the brand, and those are not the same goal.
2 min readWhen Breaking Category Color Rules Actually Works
Every category has a color everyone defaults to, and breaking it on purpose is a real distinctiveness move, not just a rebellious impulse.
3 min readGrading Three Famous Rebrands On The Five Dimensions
Three well known rebrands, scored honestly across distinctiveness, memorability, scalability, consistency, and ownability, not just vibes.
3 min readWill AI Make Logo Blanding Worse, Or Actually Better
Generative tools promise infinite logo options, but infinite options pulled from the same training data tend to converge, not diverge.
2 min readSVG, EPS, Or PDF: The Vector File Your Kit Actually Needs
SVG, EPS, and PDF are not interchangeable vector formats, and handing a vendor the wrong one is how logos quietly degrade.
3 min readWhat Three Different Blues Actually Cost Your Brand
Inconsistent brand color is not a design nitpick, it is a line item, and most companies never add up what three different blues actually cost.
2 min readWhat Makes A Wordmark Ownable, Not Just Legible
A wordmark that just spells out the company name in a nice font is not ownable, it is only legible, and those are different jobs entirely.
2 min readDesign In Black And White First, Add Color Last
A logo that only works in full color has not been tested yet, so start every design in black and white and add color last.
2 min readDesign Your Logo To Survive The Circle Crop
Instagram, LinkedIn, and most app icons crop your logo into a circle, so test your mark inside one before launch, not after.
2 min readDesign Your Logo For The Printer, Not Just The Screen
Screen printing, embroidery, and laser engraving each punish certain logos, so the merch spec should shape the design brief, not the other way around.
3 min readThe Oldest Logos Still in Use
Bass, Twinings, and John Deere: what 150 year old marks have in common, and the renovation discipline that kept them recognizable.
2 min readWhat Logo Contests Actually Deliver
A fair accounting of contests and five dollar marketplaces: what you get, what the economics forbid, and when cheap is honestly fine.
2 min readAI Upscaling Will Not Save Your Logo
Upscalers hallucinate plausible pixels, and plausible is a synonym for wrong when the exact curve of your R is the brand. Myths, retired.
2 min readRebranding Without Losing Your Search Traffic
A rebrand is a migration wearing a party hat. The redirect map, bridge content, and monitoring that keep years of search equity alive.
2 min readWhy Make the Logo Bigger Is Sometimes Right
The famous client note is often a lay translation of a real problem: the brand is not registering. When bigger is correct, and when not.
2 min readThe Five-Competitor Lineup
A ten minute DIY distinctiveness audit: your mark against five rivals, small, then grayscale. If they must read the names, nobody passed.
2 min readWhen One Logo Has to Become a Family
Sub-brands are how footer chaos is born. Branded house, house of brands, endorsed hybrid, and the discipline that keeps a family legible.
2 min readColor Codes Are a Contract
HEX for screens, CMYK for print, Pantone for exact matches. Define all three the day you pick the color, or meet your second blue.
2 min readHow to Brief a Designer (or a Machine)
Most doomed logos were doomed in the brief. The five questions that produce a mark you can keep, whether a human or an AI is drawing.
2 min readLogo Trends That Will Not Survive Printing
Gradients and glassmorphism look expensive on a bright screen. Embroidery, screen printing, and engraving hold other opinions.
2 min readThe Favicon Is Your Storefront
Your heaviest users see the browser tab more often than any billboard. Designing the 16 pixel version first, and why that compounds.
2 min readMascots, Monograms, and Memory
Faces are memory superfoods and monograms are celery. What the research says actually sticks, and how to pick your spot between them.
2 min readResponsive Logos: One Mark, Four Sizes
A ladder of designed simplifications from full lockup to 16 pixel glyph, so nobody ever improvises a version of your logo again.
2 min readThe Redesign Backlash Playbook
Gap folded in six days. Tropicana lost a fifth of sales in two months. Telling opinion backlash from behavior backlash, and holding your nerve.
2 min readWhy Agencies Charge $10k for a Logo
An honest cost breakdown of an identity project: where the hours actually go, what the cheap version skips, and when the price is wrong.
2 min readTrademark Basics for Founders
Owning the file is not owning the mark. What a logo needs before you can defend it, from the strength ladder to the clearance search.
2 min readLogo Files, Named Properly
Three blues syndrome starts in a folder called logos final. The asset structure and naming convention that keep a brand consistent.
2 min readThe Typography Half of Your Logo
Your customers meet your type hundreds of times a day while the symbol makes a cameo. What a type pairing does all day, unsupervised.
2 min readWhat a Brand Guidelines PDF Is Actually For
Most guidelines documents are scrapbooks. The five rules yours must contain, and why a six page PDF beats a sixty page brand bible.
2 min readNegative Space: The Cheapest Distinctive Feature
The gap you do not ink can be the most ownable part of your mark. Why negative space beats added flourishes, and how to find yours.
2 min readBorn Vector: The Quality Bar for AI Logo Generation
One question separates serious AI logo tools from toys: what format is the mark born in? Not exported to. Born in.
2 min readWordmark, Monogram, or Symbol: Picking the Right Logo Type
Before fonts and colors, a logo makes one structural choice, and each option is a bet on how your brand will be encountered.
2 min readRebrand or Refresh? Grade Your Own Logo First
Named problems have sized solutions, from a $0 consistency tune-up to a full rebrand. Five questions tell you which one you actually need.
2 min readLogo Color Psychology: Less Magic, More Market
Blue does not manufacture trust. Color's real job is identification, and identification is relative to who else in your market got there first.
2 min readFavicon to Billboard: Designing a Logo That Scales
A logo lives between 16 pixels and 48 feet. Most marks are designed for the one size they will never be used at: comfortably large on a monitor.
2 min readThe Real Cost of a Free Logo
A free logo is a loan with compounding interest: shared DNA, no legal footing, ransomed files, and a rebrand already on the calendar.
2 min readWhy Every Logo Looks the Same: The Blanding Problem
Nobody sets out to be generic. Blanding is the sum of individually reasonable decisions, and it quietly transfers your ad spend to the market leader.
2 min readHow AI Logo Generators Actually Work (and Where They Fail)
Template shufflers, diffusion models, and constrained vector generation: three very different machines hide behind the same marketing label.
2 min readVector vs. Raster Logos: Why That PNG Is Costing You
If a PNG is the master file of your brand, you are one billboard, one embroidered polo, or one retina display away from an expensive lesson.
2 min readThe Five-Second Logo Test: Why Memorability Beats Beauty
Show someone your logo for five seconds. What they can sketch an hour later is your actual brand. Everything else is decoration.
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