7 proven ways how to convey speed, force and movement in logo design
Recently I was facing a challenging task — create a logo for medical laboratory with the emphasis on convenience and speed. “You can get the result very quickly in our lab” — told me my friend, one of the co-founders of the start-up. Then he continued:
We really want to disrupt the current medical lab background by reducing the time our clients waiting for their medical reports. We have an automated registration and integrated reporting system plus range of the machines from fully-auto to POCT analyzers, that help us to move things faster. Our staff is well-trained and ready to perform the common lab tasks 2x-3x times faster without any sacrifice on the quality of the reports.
Then he also asked me to come up with the potential name, although he gave me several suggestions to play around: impulse, neuron and rapid with the word lab in the end.
I like projects within health topics. My recent project was a website design for the healthcare network in Africa. Most of the time you are trying to keep up with the format of a professional, trustworthy team that can solve your health problems. Conservative, corporate blue and sea green colors, simple layout with emphasis on contact information and call to action — that is easy, but speed is a new deal for me. I haven’t had any experience designing logos for transportation, racing or delivery companies, neither for any fitness or sport-related fields. So I decided to research the field trying to pick up elements that make logos move. In this article, you will see the result of my explorations with inspirational examples of logos from different industries.
Running character or object
Asgardia logo — moving horse
Very elegant outlines of the moving horse. The mane and skirt are directed against the main vector maximizing the expression of the force and velocity.
DTDC delivery — running courier
Not that elegant, but still a good example of the running man in the logo. DTDC is one of the largest delivery companies in the world.
Fitness app logo design by Ramotion
One of my favorites — fitness app icon by Ramotion:
The idea of the logo was to show a joint activity with your friends, competitions. Puzzle effect inspired the design and after a few iterations, we found the shape that could create a seamless pattern.
CH Delivery by Alen Pavlovich
Running Panda by Daria Sergeeva
Running is fun and healthy. Cute negative space panda logo for the community of vegan runners.
I am running this by Jakob Cass
Reducing everything to the symbol of running legs? Way too abstract you might say. What if you are working on the logo for the “blog about living my best running life”? Egyptian hieroglyphs were primarily used in religious writings. Using a similar symbol is a great idea when you are trying to portray a personal belief system — a deep commitment of the human being to a healthy lifestyle.
Moving lines
Fast Rabbit by Mizan
Adding lines to the moving or static object is the most basic and intuitive way to denote the velocity.
Brakfast by Sapna Patel
My favorite thing in this approach is that motion lines can be an essential part of the artwork and help to move it at the same time. The Brakfat logo is a excellent example — moving egg and hand symbols shows both speed and convenience.
Roadrunner by Steve Wolf
Another beautiful example when motion lines are integrated in the character.
Best Babies by dalajlampa
Moving lines are a powerful tool. Notice a huge impact of these tiny motion lines in the Bet Babies logo design.
Text and motion lines — EMS Logo
EMS is one of the biggest delivery companies in the world. Its logo incorporates motion lines and the slant — third way how you can get your logos move.
Slant and italics
In the world of big businesses logos are very abstract and dead simple. Big multinational corporation are trying to avoid risky character logos or more complex artworks betting on the lettermarks or wordmarks to represent their brands. Thus they have limited ways of expressing the speed, pace or force in their logo designs. One of the viable option is italicizing or slanting the word to add the needed impetus to the letters.
DHL logo
DHL logo is a great example. Do you have any doubt about direction of the logo? It’s left to right, isn’t it? If you are from the western country, you might also say “forward”.
US open by Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv
Seeing famous design companies working with the biggest brands is always fun. It seems to me their main task is not to spoil something already loved and used by millions of people. The US Open is a great example — the biggest tennis event in the Western hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world. CGH uses italic to add some velocity to the logotype.
The new mark is an evolution of the flaming ball idea, distilled to its essence to work as a simple icon. The new modern symbol is paired with an italic, lowercase sans serif typography, with the name held together by a flipped “u” and an “n.” The result expresses the energy, spirit, and velocity of the flaming tennis ball and the US Open itself, while modernizing the look, providing a more youthful appeal, and optimizing the identity for applications on everything from apps and Instagram to billboards, print ads, and swag.
Big brands love slant. Not convinced? Take a look at the following examples below.
Bridgestone logo
Michelin logo
Formula 1 logo before and now
Delivery Hero
To apply a slant to your logo in Gravit Designer bring up the Transform Panel by clicking the Transform button. Then locate the Skew text fields and type the angle value inside the X field. Click the Apply button to commit the changes.
Dysmorphia and perspective
Dysmorphia is a condition when the body looses normal proportions — some parts of the body are either too small or too big. There are some beautiful example among both industry leaders and indie logos. Let’s take a look at them.
Qantas Logo
Kangaroo first appeared on the emblem of the leading Australian airlines in 1944. Three years later they realized that normal kangaroo’s silhouette cannot represent the airway transportation. It is way too heavy and grounded. They changed the animal’s shape reducing the body and elongating the legs and tail. They also attached unnecessary wings, which were dropped in the 1984. They slimmed down the body in the last iteration by introducing a gradient to it giving the logo a truly sport-like appearance and perception of the highest velocity.
Rabbit by milos and bunny by spoonlancer
The shape of almost anything can be changed to represent a speed, power and velocity. These two rabbits are good examples of the dysmorphia. Most of the time try to make legs longer and body slimmer to get your character to look faster.
A perspective is similar to the dysmorphia. The body is changed to look as if character is entering the view in a higher speed.
Shipmates by ataslayar
There is nothing exceptional about this logo. I picked it up to show you a well executed example of using “perceptive for higher speed”. In place of this courier can be a rocket, a comet or any other object you want to move faster.
Suny Canton by studio Simon
Very original way of using perspective to depict power and speed in Suny Canton Athletics logo design.
Blurred edges
Tone animation logo
Objects that are moving quickly look kind of blurry. Attaching the so called motion blur to the moving object is very popular in animation.
Pantheion logo by Cordero
Zrimo logo design by Denis Kotliarov
You can apply four types of blur to any object in Gravit Designer. Head over to the Effects panel/More/Blur and select the thumbnail with the type of blur you want to apply to the object.
Read more about Gravit effects in the official documentation.
Repeat element within a vector
Circular motion can be depicted by arranging the object around the circle or in the arc.
Blender Magazine by Pearpod and St. Petersburg Open by Studio Asgard
A circle is very holistic shape and it is perfect if you want to depict the union of people celebrating a top class sport event such as St. Petersburg Open. It also has a lot of round movements to show how active, fun and youthful the event would be.
Blender magazine was some day an “ultimate guide to music and more”. To show their ability to mix multiple genres under one cover they were using an vortex symbol.
Thomson Reuters
How to portray a multinational company that is trying to pick up with the all main events and news in the constantly changing media landscape? Thomson Reuters decided to show this complexity with moving arrays of circles in their symbol.
Arrange objects in a circle in Gravit
To scatter an object around the circle in Gravit Designer, you should first create a duplicate it by using the shortcut Ctrl/Cmd+D. Then bring up the Transforpm panel and position the center of your transformation by moving the diamond point. Rotate the duplicate by dragging the bounding box of the object. When you are happy, release the Left mouse button key and duplicate your last transformation by hitting the Ctrl+D several times.
Originally published at https://vitorials.net.
