Logo design is an important part of the branding process for any company, website or non-profit organisation but more often than not, logo’s tend to be quite boring and don’t make use of any real concept that’s likely to help the brand form a proper identity.
One way to combat this is to create a logo for your company based on a concept (i.e. a conceptual logo design). To put it simply, a conceptual logo design is a logo that has a hidden/double meaning that represents the nature of brand it’s promoting. When these types of logos are done well, they can gain a huge amount of attention for your business/website but creating a great conceptual logo is no easy task.
To give you some inspiration, I’ve rounded up a list of a few of my favourite conceptual logo designs that are sure to get your creative juices flowing.
#1 - FedEx
FedEx is one of the most famous and widely-recognised conceptual logos in existence, yet many people aren’t aware of the hidden concept. Can you spot it?
If you look closely, you can see that between the “E” and the “x”, there’s a hidden white arrow. This is used to represent the “express” nature of company.
#2 - BirdLove
This one is pretty simple and a little more obvious than the FedEx logo above. As you can see, the logo features two birds which depict a love heart. Very clever indeed.
#3 - Killed Productions
Again, another simple concept that turns an otherwise boring logo into a fantastic concept. You can see the letter “i” in the word “killed” appears to have actually been killed.
#4 - Eds Electric
Not only does this log depict a plug and socket, but it also features a hidden letter “E” between them. Can you see it?
It might be a pretty minimalistic looking logo but the concept is genius. Look closely and you’ll see that the logo depicts the tip of a pen and also, a spoon.
#6 - Night Golf
This logo for Night Golf uses a golf ball to depict a crescent moon in the night sky. Again, a very simple yet clever concept.
#7 - Piano Forest
Piano Forest uses a minimalistic logo of black trees on a white background to double as piano keys (the trees are the flat and sharp notes).
#8 - Freedom
Ever heard of the expression “free as a bird”? Well, this logo takes that expression and creates a fantastic concept for the travel company; Freedom Travel.
#9 - The Color Cure
The Color Cute is a design studio that claims to offer a creative cure for all things ordinary. To represent this brand goal, they created this genius logo which uses a colourful tablet to fit in with the brand name.
#10 - Human
I absolutely love this logo as it’s simple, clean and ultimately features a smart concept. If you haven’t spotted it yet, take a look at the letter “a” in human. You can see that it depicts a sperm; the basis of human life.
#11 - CityCliq
CityCliq’s logo is absolutely genius. To some, it might look like a simple cityscape with the sun setting in the background whereas to others, it might look like an icon of a hand clicking a button.
#12 - Loveclip
I absolutely “love” this logo design (forgive the pun) as it’s simple, colourful and overall extremely creative. It’s definitely an eye-catching logo.
#13 - Illusion
This logo for “Illusion” uses an illusion in which to actually create the logo. If you look closely, you’ll see that there isn’t actually a letter “s” in the logo; it’s just an illusion.
#14 - Fit
At first glance, this logo will probably just look like the letters “f” and “t”. That’s because it is, but if you look more closely, you’ll see that that spacing between the two letters is used to make the letter “i”, thus spelling out the name of the brand; Fit.
#15 - Pause
Pause is a minimalistic logo that utilises the letter “u” within the word to create a pause button icon. It’s simple but clever.
#16 - Codefish
Here’s a logo for the geeks out there. Codefish uses common coding elements (e.g. parentheses etc) to create a picture of a fish. Not only is this a fantastic conceptual logo, but it’s also a logo that will increase the brands appeal to its target audience.
#17 - Shift
Shift Creative is another simple and bold logo that has a really cool, clear concept. If it’s not obvious to you, the concept is that the letters “H” and “I” are used to create a stick shift icon that any driver should recognise.
#18 - Twins
Here’s a rather funky looking logo for the brand; Twins. Upon first glance, it might appear that this is a completely normal logo but if you look closely, you’ll see that the letter “N” is not a letter “N” at all.
It’s actually the number “2″.
#19 - Families
Families is a simple and clean logo that utilises the letters “I” and “L” in the logo to create the illusion of a family. The “L” represents a parent whereas the “I” letters represent the children.
#20 - Zip
This is one of my personal favourite conceptual logos that as you can see, utilises the negative space between the letters to create the illusion of a zip.
It’s simple, bold and overall, really cool.
Biography: Richard works for Acuity Training in the UK. His company provides a range of training courses from Photoshop to Excel to HTML. If you’re looking to learn how to create an incredible logo for your business, check out the InDesign training course from AcuityTraining.com.