Logo, logotype, monogram, emblem: what to call your company's mark

Logo: the umbrella word

In everyday use, a logo is the whole graphic signature of a company: a symbol, the name drawn in a particular way, or both together. It is the word clients, printers and sign makers use, and the one this guide uses for the general case. The other terms name kinds of logo, and the difference matters because each kind suits different names and different places.

Other languages draw the lines elsewhere. In everyday Romanian a company's logo is its siglă, a word the main dictionary defines as an abbreviation made of initials, even as it defines a logo as a siglă made of graphic signs (DEX).

The names, one by one

In the days of metal type, a logotype was a word cast as a single piece of type, and by extension the term came to mean a name set in its own fixed way (Wikipedia). Today logotype and wordmark are used interchangeably.

A lettermark is a mark made only of a company's initials (Wiktionary); a monogram goes further and intertwines them, which is what English has meant by the word since the 1690s (Etymonline). The practical difference: a lettermark still reads as separate letters, a monogram reads as one sign.

Which kind suits which company

• A short, distinctive name: a logotype, with an initial or a small symbol for the favicon.
• A long name people already shorten: a lettermark or a monogram, with the full name beside it until the initials are known.
• A business seen mostly at a distance or very small (vehicles, signs, app icons): a combination mark whose symbol also works on its own.
• A trade with a heritage to show (a barber, a bakery, a brewery): an emblem, plus a simplified version for everything small.

Whichever you choose, avoid the category's own symbol (the house for a builder, the scissors for a barber, the truck for a haulier): it says what you do rather than who you are. And whatever you start from, you end with a family rather than a file: the main lockup, the symbol alone, and one-colour and inverted versions of each. How to design that family is in how to design a logo. What builders, hauliers and salons can use instead is in the guides to construction company logos, trucking and transport logos and salon, nail studio and barbershop logos.

The tests every kind has to pass

Whatever you call it, a mark spends its life in small, single-colour, badly printed places. Five of them are enough to find out whether it works:

• A 16-pixel favicon. The browser tab gives you 256 pixels in total. No name fits there; a symbol or an initial does.
• A rubber stamp. One colour of ink, and small gaps fill in. Hairlines and tiny lettering come out as a smudge.
• An invoice. Printed in black and white on an office printer, sometimes scanned back in. Two close shades become the same grey.
• A van. Lettering is cut from vinyl along vector outlines, one sheet per colour. A gradient cannot be cut, only printed.
• Embroidery. On a shirt or a cap the mark becomes stitches. Thin lines and small text do not sew cleanly, and every colour is another thread.

Two requirements follow, and neither is negotiable: the mark has to work in one colour, and it has to exist as a vector file (SVG, PDF or EPS), not only as a PNG. What each format is for, and what to ask for on delivery: logo file formats.

If you would rather start from a brief than from a blank page, RHAM draws the symbol and the named logo as vectors and exports them as SVG, PDF, EPS and PNG, with the symbol on its own for the favicon and profile pictures.

What the law calls it: word marks and figurative marks

Trademark offices do not register logos as such. The EU's office lists word marks and figurative marks as the most common types (EUIPO): a word mark consists only of words, letters, numbers or standard typographic characters, while a figurative mark uses non-standard characters, stylisation, layout, graphic features or colour, with or without words. Romania's office, OSIM, makes the same point in its trademark FAQ: neither siglă nor logo appears as such in Romanian trademark law.

The consequence people miss concerns the logotype. Filed as drawn, the name in your chosen lettering is a figurative mark, and it protects that drawing; a word mark protects the name in any typeface. That is why the usual advice is to file the name first and the drawn mark once it has settled. The procedure, costs and timing for Romania and the EU are in registering a trademark.