7 Common Logo Design Clichés(sprintf |Than Never Made the Cut in Indian Brands
Discover the logo design clichés commonly used by Indian brands that failed to impress, and learn from their logo design mistakes with Cpluz's expert guidance on creating a unique brand identity.
5 min readCpluz
7 Common Logo Design Clichés: What Never Made the Cut in Indian Brands
Indian brands have consistently pushed the boundaries when it comes to developing memorable and impactful logos, differentiating themselves from the crowd and creating meaningful brand-consumer connections. At Cpluz, our design team has assisted numerous Indian brands in crafting logotypes that stand the test of time, ensuring that these businesses maintain their unique identity and gain a competitive edge in the market. One common pitfall that companies often fall into, however, is including logo design clichés that have been done to exhaustion. Here, we identify and dissect seven such logo design tropes that rarely ever yield linguistic and visual harmony, and how India's most successful brands navigated these pitfalls.
The Overused Typography Cliché
A generic, creative-readable sans-serif font, the offering of limitless options in the digital age, continues to be explored, and oftentimes, effectively criticized for its dated approach. With an endless array of stylish sans-serif fonts and extensive use of image orientation software, this trend often results in an icing-on-the-cake, tossing-a-sheaf-of-flowers-above-a-frog-appearance in a logo design. Indian brands such as Flipkart and Ola have skillfully ventured beyond the norms and focused on the combination of typography and custom illustrations to deliver a distinct and unique design.
Logotypes Based on Letters
In a bid to correlate the logotype with the brand name, Indian businesses often adhere to letter-based logo designs. Building a logo that revolves around a single, stylized letter is tempting, as it creates a simple and memorable mark. However, when not done strategically, it may come across as bland and unappealing. To thriving brands such as Café Coffee Day, Ramoji Film City, and Hindustan Unilever, logotypes that stretch beyond a solitary letter have proven to be impressive in instilling brand credibility and reinforcement in the Indian market.
Excessive Colour Combinations
Overly Complicated Shapes and Geometric Logos
Combining intricate shapes, geometric forms, or vast line art expands the logo into bulky, often times hysterical depictions of the brand's essence. Although not completely obsolete, such designs often lead to ultra-defiant typographic disappointments, experiencing an inundation of typometric idiosyncrasies. Indian accountable firms, including Havmor Ice Cream and Solitaire Group, have characteristically entertained a classical approach towards their logos focusing on the combination of simple graphic elements rather than an aim to meditate multi-pronged symbolism within a logo, thus ensuring the retainment of diversity by allowing easy adaption in wide reaching advertising.
Iconic Inclusion of Animals and Objects
Isolating and flattering animals or depicting everyday objects isolated or distorted runs rampant in logo designing, aiming to encapsulate trait-like adjectives such as unity, courage, or balance. However, opportunities for imitative and derivative creativities root in straightforward and excessively utilized depictions, bustling with multitudinous depictions of majestic personalities such as tiger logos to dictionaries of interpretative omnivores – in an acclaimed dash to portray that the brand identities sporadically consume them. Since the time-honored background commenced, India's spirited ideas amid supreme brand introspection adorned upon inclusion of homegrown granaries accrued incessant recognition, showing brands such as IndiaMart and Quick Heal Technologies ventured beyond identification of logos with mere wild-life motifs.
Positive Emotions - Inspired Logos
Text and Logotype Overlap
Head-on collisions between text and logotype exhibit adverse design paradigm, encompassing numbing redundancy. Overlapping text and logotype are often thinkable and oft profusely attempted design stunts aiming to impactivise the brand message laced with undisguised complexity. Instead of providing a clear, visually balanced result, this pool of ever-increasing dismal applications may display the logotype as a second priority to text, where it supposedly wraps around text untranquilistically. With steadily growing practice and Indian marketing teams perfidiously gauging the issue, designers eschew conventional ways and attain distinction by focusing on curved lines instead. Evidently, organizations such as IRIS Business Centre have chosen logos which prioritize a captivating image, maintaining a formidable prowess from emotion-scorched textчим.
Cool Fonts
Since the dawn of the mid-2010s, sporty fonts and typography belonging to the 'cool fonts category' have kissed the surface of logo designing. Fanning out onto personal pages for generating 'modern' and 'futuristic' logos over time, the appeal of cool fonts now dwindles. Brands often feel tempted to grasp onto this genesis, yet lose sight in attempting competitive modernness, which may result in logo designs coming across as shallow and lacklustre. Alas, brands such as Relaxo and Rajdhani Jewellers befriended font tropes suitable to the environment, adopting only a few of them for elucidating a succinct yet profound logo. Ultimately, opting out of the deeply-worn cup upheld by typical cool fonts, Indian companies continue riding the geeky wave.
Stylized Initials
In a bid to make the identity more personal, Stylized Initials remain ubiquitous in logo design albeit recurring tropes, chronically guarantee strong diversification and brand recognition instantly. Although welcomed designs exercise control over stylization to how the initials are denoted, Indian brands, such as The Earth Resorts and Empyrean Worldwide, appreciate better design when the concept allows scope for a hint of uniqueness while ensuring that the initials correlate well with the context of the brand message.
Conclusion
By taking inspiration from Indian brands that dared to differ, avoiding clichéd logo designs can boost a brand's credibility and distinguish it from competitors. Our confluence of finesse and an artistic touch, Cpluz encourages businesses to take an innovative approach in crafting logos that mirror their character, unraveling a world of opportunities amidst hurdles of perpetual branding. For more insights into cutting-edge design, professional hosting, and digital printing solutions, reach out to us at info@cpluz.com or visit us at cpluz.com.