A few weeks ago I published a post in our blog explaining what AMP technology . is all about. At the end of the article I quoted Marcel Lourenço, Creative Director at FUEL Agency, where he makes an interesting reflection about the future of design: "In advertising, whether design or creativity,the only certainty is that everything will change.. The key to success in our businesses is to adapt to new technologies".”

In my opinion, this is already true, so much so that these days when designers start any project to create a corporate identity they are already thinking about the workings of the app, the media channels and digital profiles.

If we take this one step further, we don't only need to think about implementing the design in our corporate identity in the diverse channels, now we must adapt this image in the diverse screen formats. This order of ideas gives birth to the concept of responsive logo.

Have you ever asked yourself how would your corporate identity work in the screen of a smartwatch? Or simply how should our logotipo or isotype be seen in the limited amount of space in the top menu in your mobile site? And if you need an app, how would your logo look among the rest of the app icons in the home screen of your mobile? One example is Google. In September last year they launched a new brand identity with a design that prioritises the correct visualisation in mobile phones. The new design is easy to recognise anywhere from very small spaces to large spaces.

Almost a year ago I wrote a post where I reference the 7 qualities a logo design should have so that it is effective. Among these qualities I talk about how a logo should be designed within a framework of simplicity and, above all, it should be easily recognisable. These two points are key to ensure good adaptability to the reduced spaces in the digital world.

In our case, when designing our corporate identity, we aimed to simplify the lines of the brand to appeal to those assimilate and retain the image they are seeing. In other words, the simpler your logo image, the quicker our brains can process it and therefore the more easily it is to memorise it.

In my opinion, the simplicity of the message benefits its comprehension. In fact, the quality I most like about a good corporate identity is its powerful ability to generate emotions from simplicity.

This is why we should always pay attention to the adaptive ability of our corporate identity, because in the market there are always more and more devices, formats and smaller spaces.

Responsive Logo: what is it?

In this order of words, I would like to end this post talking a bit about a "trend in branding" called responsive logo.

Even though it seems like a "new and cool" concept that comes from the same trend of responsive web, the truth is that we've been implementing this for our whole lives. The difference is simply that there are now more formats and scenarios in play because the same market developments.

Is your logo ready to be reduced to those famous 16x16 favicon pixels? (that is the little icon that appears in the tab of your browser) And what would you tell me about those 120x120 pixels of the app icon in your mobile's home screen? Even though it is 7,5 times larger, it must still be easy to understand from the natural distance you hold your phone from.

Allow me to tell you something I remember very well. It was 15 years ago in the advertising agency I worked at, and when we developed any manual on corporate identity, in the sections on logo reductions, it outlined that the logo had to be understood perfectly in a minimum space of two centimetres (2x2 cm) on paper. Nonetheless, you also had to think about the implementation of an isotype if you wanted to print on a pen cap. If we see this way we had to develop an identity that took into consideration a "responsive logo", but in print format.

Nowadays, small formats continue lurking in the path of the graphic designer, only in digital formats. And by the way, from my point of view, it might even be easier, being lit with colour and working with pixels where you have more control of the morphology of the logo. Why? Well, because in print design, working with an icon in a space of half a square centimetre not only depends on good execution of the design. What also comes into play is the quality of the printer and print type. In such cases small prints and silkscreen ink were used, but not all have the same quality printing machinery, calibration nor execution. Not to mention that once you print there is no turning back. However, all devices use pixels and there aren't so many variables like with print. In this case good visibility of the logo depends more on the management and implementation of the design.

In short, without droning on and returning to the subject, responsive logo is nothing more than the ability of a logo to adapt to the diverse formats and scenarios in the screens of devices. The logo must be seen and understood well, whether in a space of 80 x 80 pixels or 500 x 500 px.

There is a designer called Joe Harrison Harrison who did a very interesting experiment with different well-known logos and implemented a concept of responsive logos in various screen sizes. In you go to his site and you reduce the size of the browser window you'll see how they change (see the images in this post). At the same time he also did a clever test on responsive icons. I'm sharing the two examples because I thought his work was very interesting.