Negative space logos and symbols | Hacker News Reader

Negative space logos and symbols

briandelaney.me

135 pointsmaxmzd_49 comments

And perhaps the greatest of them all... FedEx. (see http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671067/the-story-behind-the-fam...)

I have never noticed the arrow!

IMHO that is one of the main benefit of negative spaces (I didn't know the term but knew the technique): you actually hardly notice that there's "something else" and yet the logos somehow look nice. I'd say they look "soft", without knowing why.

Once you focus too much on "what's inside", it gets a bit confusing because you're seeing conflicting things (like the tree leave that is also people): but it's not a problem because it's not meant for people to really focus on.

And somehow it just works. I find several of these logos really very simple and great.

Now that this has been posted on HN I expect lots of startups to come up with similar logos ; )

I hope we see lots of these from startups. The technique produces simple, meaningful, and memorable logos which also look really good.

From now on, it's the only thing you'll see!! :)

I looked, scanned the article looking for this arrow, came back to the comments, read this, went back again, finally saw it.

The Giraffe one from the OP was super cool though :)

The Oak Bros. logo took me awhile to figure out. Also, did you notice all of the hidden symbols in the "in woods" logo? There are 4 in there.

That article deserves a submission of its own! It's incredibly interesting and it touches something that most software developers value: simplicity and clarity. We're used to saying that naming things is the hardest problem in coding, and that matches completely with a philosophy of simplicity in design. A must read.

They even made sure to include the arrow in their Arabic translation (including having it point in an appropriate direction if you read right to left):

http://i.imgur.com/8PTzYjW.jpg

Oh this is so awesome!

No, you're wrong. That would be the old Hartford Whalers logo:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/70/Hartford...

Man, I just don't get design. The FedEx logo does nothing for me. The arrow doesn't really mean anything (an airplane would have been cool, given that their big differentiator was speed when they started).

But that this logo won 40 awards? (Note that I'm automatically assuming that the awards are meaningful.) I'm definitely someone who has to pay for design, because I just don't get it.

You need to think of the context of that logo, which was, what, 30 years ago? The arrow meant speed in a time when post (hell, pretty much everything) was slow. And visual jokes such as this were still pretty new. It's like saying The Beatles' 'She Loves You' is simple and obvious, yeah, it might seem like that now, but it sure as hell wasn't the case back then!

The FedEx logo is the first time I noticed the negative space technique and really sparked my interest in branding. It's amazing how such a simple mark can represent so much.

Never noticed the arrow, and it seems I'm not the only one. The font weight and contrasting colors overpower the subtle negative space.

Fantastic collection, thanks for sharing.

WiredPR, Oak Bro, Fingers, Giraffe... these are all excellent. Makes me very envious of the creator's talent and creativity!

I think my favourite one is the Robarov logo

The Oak Bro logo is very subtle. You immediately see the leaf, but not the negative space line of busts on bottom and line of asses on top.

Do you think the line of asses was because the designer found the brothers difficult to work with :-) ?

Very interesting, as I'm about to shell out some cash for a logo designer.

In Dog Dental I really like how the bottom of the D forms the dog's neck.

It should have more classic examples, such as the already mentioned Fedex logo, or the Carrefour logo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrefour)

I haven't seen goodwill mentioned yet.

http://blog.crowdspring.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/goodw...

That one took me so long to see the "g".

The Carrefour logo is an excellent example. I only noticed the C a couple of years ago; i had lived 20 and something years thinking the logo was just a weird arrow. But once you see it, you can't unsee it hehe.

I haven't seen the Formula One logo mentioned, and that's definitely worth looking at if people aren't familiar with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One

The Wired PR one is too much. I read WIR :D PR.

I quite like the idea of having a smiley in a company name actually…

Reminds me of the old Ontario Hydro logo a bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Hydro

The D with the E looks like a power plug.

Isn't that an O and an H?

I assume that the D and E in the Wired PR logo is meant.

Honestly?

I don't think these are great examples. They are 'school' examples maybe, but some of these look amateurish

For example, the 4x (Fox) breaks the left-to-right convention, you can't identify it as such until you see it all. Some others haven't gotten the gist of the idea (forgot the word, sorry) and do things just because.

The article is meant to present the concept and provide inspiration for other artists; it's not a treatise on the history of the technique. I plan to update it as I find more clever examples.

Why don't you offer constructive examples?

No love for the Hartford Whalers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Whalers

Is that a mustache?

Presumably it's a tail. A whale's tail.

Where yo' curleh moustache at?

Sadly unlike the Office of Government Commerce:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-logo...

I'd get tired of someof those, but the Locknet one is great. Very good. Almost alarmingly simple execution, and conveys the sense of locking something. And authority. Big subtle message.

It is far too subtle for me. It lacks the call for curiosity, because the simplicity is just too well executed. Could have been made a tad more obvious, or more puzzling, at the cost of losing some of the simplicity.

What is especially clever about the logo is the use of a serif L and nesting the sans-serif N inside of it. The juxtaposition is wonderful, and makes the N that slight bit more subtle.

I love being hit by invisible assailants :)

I recall reading a post or pdf from a few years ago that reviewed 30 or more years of logos? It was a great collection of hundreds of logos. Does anyone have a link to that?

When I was a kid in art class the canonical example was the old Hartford Whalers logo, which had a negative-space 'H' between the 'W' and the tail fluke.

Perhaps too many foxes, but a nice selection.

Great collection of logos -- a few of these I feel are "too much" but many are great. Love the Giraffe one.

Are women under represented in the logo design industry? I only see two recognizably female names.

I had the same thought as I went back to append the names of the artists in the collection. I have seen lots of great logos designed by women as I've scoured Dribbble, just not so many using the negative space technique. What does that say? Maybe men and women perceive design differently? This would be an interesting topic to explore.

How i wish i could afford you to work on my logo.

the In Woods one looks like an inverted Firefox logo. Elephant2 looks like Evernote.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com