Animal logo design guidelines

It is an obvious choice to use an animal in your logo design when you have this animal in your company name or your business offers products for animals or animal products. It became however a common practice, an actual trend, to use an animal image in logo design without an obvious reason. Today, it seems to be all about animals.

It became a trend i think because the animals seem to have a dominant characteristic about them, they stand for something, so they are easy to use as a metaphor, an image that speaks beyond what we can see. I've tried to make a list of things we need to keep in mind and check out when designing an animal logo.


 

Make the right choice of character.

Animals seem to stand for something and express a characteristic metaphorically. You can express wisdom and intelligence by using an owl, loyalty by using a dog, femininity by using a cat, sharpness by using a fox and playfulness by using a bunny. You need to carefully choose your character animal to express the right idea. Research you animal character well before you use it for your logo design and make sure your target is aware of the metaphor you're trying to express. Use a swan to describe elegance, a horse for speed, a bear for power, a lion for royalty, a ladybug for good luck, an elk bull for pride, a duck to say fun and goofy or a shark for aggressiveness.

 

Choose the appropriate design style

Either you go for cartoonish, simple line, sketch or fully detailed design you need to match the logo design style with the type of company you do the logo design for. Sometimes you just need a few lines or a spot of color to catch the animal's character and emphasize an idea, other times you need to go in full detail to render more deeply the metaphor you want to transpose into design.

 

Match the animal character with the appropriate font type

Do not forget that the font type you choose needs to be along the lines of the character of the animal logo you you design. A bear figure would usually require a heavy type of font to display power while a swan design would need an elegant type face to emphasize the character of the logo. Choose a playful typeface to go along with a bunny image, or a serif strong typeface to associate with the royal image of a lion. Of course contrasts between typeface and imagery can be made, but make sure the idea you want to convey is understood.