One of the most important terms in the last decade of websites has been
responsive design.
In a nutshell, it means that the webpage you are building or the images and elements on it have the ability to move and shift to fit any size screen on any size device.
If they can, your business is offering viewers, consumers, and customers a seamless view of your website, meaning they don’t have to struggle to see what you are offering, can interact seamlessly with the functionality, and if possible, buy what you’re offering without having to switch devices.
With the average interest level of a person on the Internet in general, and even more so on a smartphone, being about 3 seconds, having a responsive design for your company’s website is a huge game-changer. Have it and you’re a competitor. Don’t have it and you’re perpetually on the bench.
Responsive Logos
As a website changes size and dimensions to fit various screens, so to does a logo have to. But merely shrinking or growing a logo is not the smartest way to make that change. Logos come in all shapes and styles, and while some are flexible, many lose their value if they are shrunk or enlarged to more than a comfortable amount.
For that reason, it’s a smart idea for your business to have logo variations that can be used in other size screens. These can be alternative versions of your main logo or completely different types of logos that emulate the theme of your main work. Depending on what you’re selling, what your original logo looks like, and what are the key parts of your logo, you can use some or all of these alternatives.
Wordmark and Logotype Alternates
A
wordmark is a logo that uses the name of your brand and usually appears mainly as words, perhaps on a colored background or perhaps with a certain part of your original logo incorporated. These are smart to use because you can turn them into lots of other shapes, including a longer, more narrow rectangular shape if that works better on a certain type of screen than the traditional circles and squares. Moreover, having the words written out instead of a greatly reduced logo lets viewers be able to identify your brand without question - it is literally spelled out in front of them.
Lettermarks and Monograms
You can also drop your logo down to a single letter to represent your brand. If you’ve used one sort of font consistently for you logos and branding, that can be a real boon as a single letter in that font will clue viewers in to your company’s identity. Companies like UPS, NASA, and
P&G use lettermarks to condense their names all the time because it saves space and gives them the opportunity to be more easily remembered.
Pictorial Mark
A single image can be a powerful reminder of what brand a viewer is checking out. A great example is the
bluebird from Twitter. Anyone who has used social media in the last 15 years knows it so well that there is no mistaking it for anything else. These pictorial marks are the opposite of lettermarks, but no less effective. Nike, Apple, Target, and Starbucks are other good examples of pictorial marks that work perfectly on any occasion. If you’re a new business, this would be a hard arena to get into right away, but if you have a specific image, definitely cultivate it as your business grows.
Closing Thoughts
The overall key is to be as noticeable as possible for your viewers without having to make them work hard to figure out the brand they are looking at. If they have to zoom in or take off their reading glasses, you’ve already failed the test and the viewer will likely be moving on to another page in a few seconds. To get help with alternate logos for responsive design, take a gander at
the logo artists from Hire the World. By putting together a job, you can receive multiple bids and hire the one you think best lines up with what you need.
