Top 5 Logo Trends of 2024 You Shouldn’t Miss

The design sector is currently navigating through revolutionary changes with the adoption of emerging technologies. The sector is embracing generative AI, immersive content, inclusive designs, and user-centric approaches. In this ever-evolving landscape of design, new trends are booming across design spectrums. While logo design trends do not evolve drastically each year, there are a few game-changing trends that designers shouldn’t miss. These changes are setting new standards in the design sector with automation tools and software to support designers.

What is the Essence of Logo Design?

Logo design is a vertical of visual communication and brand identity. The logo essentially serves as the face of a brand, it is the first impression of your business. It appears across marketing and communication platforms like social media networks, business cards, websites, digital campaigns, etc. Communicating to people the brand story. It helps the audience to know more about a business, its products, and its services.

They are a direct form of storytelling, holding immense power to convey not just the brand’s values and ethos but also the era of its birth. In our modern age – logos are defined by their innovation, technology, and inclusion.

The key components of a logo design are:

i. Type design / Typography
ii. Colour palettes
iii. Design style – Vintage, Minimalist, Retro, etc.
iv. Symbols/ Icon
v. Slogan

The Evolving Key Trends in Logo Design

The dynamic design world today is embracing innovations to reflect the changes in consumer behaviour, technology, and global remote work evolution. In logo design, the new trends are shaped by a rise in human-centric design, metaverse, and 3D web. Let’s dive into the logo design and the trends you shouldn’t miss out on:

1. 3D animated logos

One of the most adopted trends in the past few years is the 3D animated logo. It is a moving logo representation of a brand. 3D animated logos add depth, texture, and movement to the otherwise flat logos in image format. They are used as GIFs, moving files, or short intro videos on the brand website and across social media campaigns. They are most widely used across brands’ AR/VR platforms and devices enhancing user experience.

What’s revolutionary is how brands are connecting their mascots, or symbols in the moving logo design to elevate brand experiences for the users. Take Nike for instance, the dynamic 3D logo 3D moving moves into the brand’s swish symbol with ease. Google’s moving logo design is another great example. The logo transitions from its logo ‘Google’ in the four basic colours to four browsing dots and then into its voice assistant symbol with ease.

Other brands are bringing to life their animal mascots into friendly characters to communicate brand personality and build a connection with the user.

2. Responsive logos and dynamic logos

Technology has also ushered in the era of responsive logo design. This means adapting to the new needs of the users who are using laptops, smart devices, smartwatches, and mobile phones to access the internet. Responsive logos are dynamic entities that fluidly adapt to a digital environment. They are dynamic, versatile, and bring easy recall.

Responsive logos are essential for brands that want their customer to choose their brand from any device over others. Take Spotify for instance, the brand uses several logo variations with ease across the platforms. The brand uses a full logo design with the three curved lines representing soundwaves inside a green circle and its name on desktop devices and laptops, the logo design adapts to smartwatch devices as just the three curved lines with a circular background symbol. Easy to recognize and find. This helps brands to ensure consistency across platforms.

3. Generative AI logo designs

As AI continues to evolve, it offers designers many tools and software to build logo designs from text prompts and sketch uploads. Using generative AI has exponentially expedited the design processes for logo designers and visual communication experts. Designers can bring their ideas, sketches, and illustrations to life using AI tools and generate quick colour and typography iterations. It also helps designers to generate multiple revisions in less amount of time than traditional design cycles, saving time and resources. It helps designers to come up with new ideas and get inspired.

Some of the leading AI tools for logo generation are Logo.ai, Designs.ai, Looka, Brandmark, etc.

4. Custom/ Experimental typography

Many brands are designing their unique typeface to design logos that are fun, unique, and show the personality of the brand. It is becoming a popular logo design trend for brands. Many logo designers are coming up with interactive and dynamic typeface designs. Designers can directly transform the brand name into an animated logo that interacts with users.

For instance: Google has an exclusive typeface design called Product Sans. It’s a geometric sans serif typeface custom-made for Google as their corporate branding. It’s an exclusive typeface that cannot be used outside the brand.

Did you know Strate School of Design also has its unique typeface design? It’s called the StrateFont and is specially designed to reflect the design school’s values and ethos.

5. Accessible logo design

Accessibility in logo design means the logo should be easy to identify, read, and eyeball for people with different abilities. To ensure a logo is accessible, designers work with an accessible colour palette.

Silktide Simulator is a unique app that offers designers a look into how their chosen colour palette will appear to people with different visual impairments. Allowing designers to choose colours that are accessible to everyone. Designers also make a logo design more accessible by avoiding visually complex details and busy layouts.

Other trends shaping the logo design segment are:

a. Fluid lines and organic shapes: Free-flowing organic shapes that resemble objects found in nature. Fluid lines create dynamic movements and evoke a sense of energy to convey continuous progress.

b. Negative space in logos: This means empty space that surrounds an object, the logo, or the image. It’s a deliberate negative space to enhance the visual impact and build the brand’s unique storytelling. It allows designers to create clear visual illusions.

c. Eco-friendly themes: Another rising trend is incorporating eco-friendly themes using earthy colours, organic shapes, and natural imagery. Helping brands to represent their commitment to environmental responsibility.

As AI and other technology continue to influence design, these logo trends are bringing in a fresh sense of creativity and innovation. Each trend from AI logo generator to accessible logo design and dynamic logos carries its flavour and message to the audience. Learning about the latest trends can help designers rise above the noise and pitch suitable logo designs to their clients.

If you are seeking to become an expert in visual communication design and logo design, Starte School of Design offers an immersive bachelor’s programme in Brand Identity and Visual Communication Design. The programme is curated with key learning in leading design concepts like typography, graphic design, advertising, animation, and tech-based design learning. It empowers students with industry-powered live projects and global immersion and networking.

Learn more about the Visual Communication program here.