What is the difference between letters in a font and a logo
Sometimes clients don’t understand the difference between a font and a logo because both use letters. I’ll tell you what the difference is between them.
When working on letters, a typographer tries to achieve maximum harmony and combination of any letters standing next to each other. In contrast, a graphic designer creates letters for a logo that only works in a given order and arrangement.
Read also synopsis of a book about letters.
Yuri Gordon writes very precisely about this in The Book of Letters (Cyrillic alphabet):
“A font is a unique art form, an endless puzzle where all the details in any combination must form a plastically complete whole. A logo needs maximum purity and the expressiveness of characters. Therefore, even if the letters are taken from a ready-made font, it’s always desirable, on the one hand, to remove everything superfluous from them and, on the other hand, to strengthen their conformity by adding rhymes. In addition, since the letters stand in strictly defined places, opportunities arise to rhyme them in various ways.
A letter that is part of a logo is important where it stands. It’s made to work only at its position in a single word. In a font, the letters must hold any position in any word equally well.”
How I work
Read more about the process on the JOOF Mantra logo.
Most of the time, I draw the letters for the logos myself, and the result is a unique work. Like the logo for the music label JOOF Mantra, for example:
But this approach is not always necessary. In some cases, I take a ready-made font as a basis, modify it, refine the letters, and get a unique work. For example:
Read about the process on the Daniel Lesden logo.
Again, in both cases, the logos are unique. And even if it’s based on a ready-made font, it doesn’t mean the logo is inferior. Sometimes it’s easier to render it yourself than to look for the right font. In the case of the JOOF Mantra label logo, for example, I had no options. I would not have found a ready-made font that would reflect the idea. That said, the Daniel Lesden logo is based on simple letters, and there was no point in drawing them. The ready-made font did a great job of giving me the shape I needed to work with.
A logo is a single item that is convenient to use at all times and everywhere. On the other hand, a font comprises many parts, each of which is meaningful and has a finished form. These parts can be rearranged in any order, but the overall shape will always be equally good.
